\ 



STRAIGHT 
SERMONS 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



tya^Q. VdopijrigW % 



Shelf ...X.3 S 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



3Sp $>entp San 5Dp&e* 

THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. Third Edi- 
tion. $2.00. 

STRAIGHT SERMONS: To Young Men and 
other Human Beings. $1.25. 

THE REALITY OF RELIGION. FifthEdUion, 

$1.00. 

THE STORY OF THE PSALMS. FoitrthEdi- 
tion. #1.50. 



STRAIGHT SERMONS 



STRAIGHT SERMONS 



Co gcmns Jften an* ©t&er 



PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITIES OF 
YALE HARVARD AND PRINCETON 



/ BY 

HENRY VAN DYKE D. D. 

PASTOR OF THE BRICK CHURCH 
NEW YORK 



NEW YORK 

Charles Srriiner'fi; Sana 

1893 




4fl 



Copyright, 1893, 
By HE201Y VAN DYKE. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., 17. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



\/ 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

PHILLIPS BROOKS 

A NOBLE MAN AMONG MEN 

A FAITHFUL. PREACHER OF CHRIST 

AND A TRUE SHEPHERD OF SOULS 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 



PREFACE 
* &n5 t&e croofeei s&ail it mate fi^traisl)t/ , 

Isaiah xl. 4. 



It has not seemed necessary, and perhaps 
it would not be possible, to disguise the con- 
tents of this small volume as essays, or to set 
it forth under a general and taking title 
which might offer some allurement to curi- 
osity. Let it go for what it is, — a book 
of sermons, straight and simple. 

They were made for a church in which, 
fortunately, there are a great many young 
men, and they have since been preached, 
with one exception, in college chapels at 
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and elsewhere. 
This fact is mentioned merely to account 
for their practical tendency, and to explain, 
or excuse, the singular circumstance that 
there is nothing peculiar in their religious 
teaching. 

This singularity arises from the convic- 
tion, which I cherish, that young men are 



x preface 

really human beings. They are not a dis- 
tinct species. They belong to the human 
race and are entitled to be humanly treated. 
The best life for them is not separate and 
artificial, but natural, simple, active, full of 
vigorous exercise for mind and body. The 
right education for them is not that of the 
cloister, in which they are divided from 
the world, but that of the home, the school, 
the university, the camp, the workshop, the 
athletic field, the market-place, where lib- 
erty is joined to responsibility, and where 
they are taught to feel that they belong to 
the world and trained to play a noble, manly 
part in it. The true religion to guide them 
in this education, and fit them for this life, 
is not something novel and peculiar, spe- 
cially devised for young men, but simply the 
plain religion of Christ, which is good for 
everybody, of every age and condition, and 
for all alike. 

It is good for all of us human beings to 
know that we are not creatures of chance or 



Prefate xi 

fate, but children of God, capable of fellow- 
ship with Him, and heirs of immortality if 
we will only hold fast to our birthright. It 
is good for us all to have firm faith and 
true courage ; to pray for power from above ; 
and to live as those who have been redeemed 
by Christ from the bondage of sin and self- 
ishness and moral death. It is good for us 
all to take warning and encouragement from 
the mistakes and adventures of other men, 
and to bring the life-histories of the Bible 
home to our own business and bosoms. It 
is good for us all to refrain from harsh and 
hasty judgment of our fellow-men, and to im- 
itate what Francis of Assisi calls " the great 
Courtesy of God, who maketh his sun to 
shine and his rain to fall upon the just and 
upon the unjust." It is good for us all not 
to waste our time in speculating about those 
mysteries of theology which lie beyond the 
horizon, but rather to content ourselves with 
proving the value of a short creed, honestly 
believed and thoroughly applied. This, in 



xii preface 

outline, is the kind of religion which my 
father (of blessed memory) taught to me, 
and which I have tried to teach in these 
sermons. 

But there is one thing in which they have 
been distinctly influenced by the character 
of the congregations to whom they were 
preached. No thinking minister can stand 
up before a company largely composed of 
young men without a strong wish to be plain- 
spoken and to come straight to the point. 
They have a fine impatience of all mere for- 
malities and roundabout modes of speech, 
which acts as a moral tonic to brace the 
mind from vagueness and cleanse the tongue 
of cant. They want a man to say what he 
means and to mean what he says. The 
influence of this unspoken demand is whole- 
some and inspiring, and the preacher ought 
to show his gratitude for it by honestly en- 
deavouring to meet it. 

For this reason I have tried to write these 
sermons, not in a theological dialect, but in 
the English language. 



Preface 



Xlll 



Their real aim is nothing else than to help 

people to be good, which is the hardest and 

the finest thing in the world. Their gospel is 

simply this : that the sure way to be good 

is to trust and follow Jesus Christ, the Son 

of God. 

Minister's Room, Harvard College, 
January, 1893. 



CONTENTS. 



I. A Man 1 



II. Faith .... 

III. Courage 

IV. Power 

V. Redemption . 

VI. Abraham's Adventure 

VII. Solomon's Choice 

VIII. Peter's Mistake 

IX. God over All 

X. The Horizon . 



27 

51 

71 

97 

123 

147 

167 

191 

211 



I 

A MAN 
" poto mtte&, t&en, te a man better t&an a sfceep ? ' 

Matthew xii, 12. 



"5>oto mttck fytn, i* a man httttx tjjan a a&eep ? " 

To Him who first spoke these noble words 
they were an exclamation ; for He knew, as 
no one else has ever known, " what was in 
man." But to us, who repeat them, they 
often seem like a question ; for we are so ig- 
norant of what is best in ourselves and our 
fellow-men, we have so confused ourselves 
with artificial views and theories, that we find 
ourselves at the point to ask in perplexity, 
How much, then, is a man better than a 
sheep ? 

It is evident that the answer to this ques- 
tion must depend upon the view that we take 
of life. And at the very outset I want to in- 
vite your attention to two of the views that 
are current in the world, and the necessary 
conclusions to which they lead us in regard 
to man. 

Suppose, in the first place, that we take a 



Stratff&t Sermons 



materialistic view of life. We shall then 
deny all evidence except that which we re- 
ceive through our senses. Looking at the 
world from this standpoint, we shall see in it 
a great mass of matter, curiously regulated 
by laws which have results but no purposes, 
and agitated into various modes of motion by 
a secret force whose origin is, and forever 
must be, unknown. Life, in man as in other 
animals, is but one form of this force. Ris- 
ing through many subtle gradations from 
the first tremor that passes through the gas- 
tric nerve of a jelly-fish to the most delicate 
vibration of gray matter in the brain of a 
Plato or a Shakespeare, it is really the same 
from the beginning to the end, — physical in 
its birth among the kindred forces of heat 
and electricity, physical in its decay and ex- 
tinction as the causes which sustain it are 
gradually weakened or suddenly cut off. 
The only difference between man and the 
other animals is a difference of degree. The 
ape takes his place in our ancestral tree, and 
with the sheep we must acknowledge at least 
a cousinship. 

It is true that we have somewhat the ad- 
vantage of these poor relations. We belong 



a i$tan 5 

to the more fortunate branch of the family, 
and have entered upon an inheritance con- 
siderably enlarged by the extinction of col- 
lateral branches. But, after all, it is the 
same inheritance ; and there is nothing in 
humanity which is not derived from, and des- 
tined to, earth and ashes and dust. 

If, then, you accept this view of life, what 
answer can you give to the question, How 
much is a man better than a sheep ? You 
must say : He is a little better, but not much. 
In some things he has the advantage. He 
lives longer, and has more powers of action 
and capacities of pleasure. He is more 
clever, and has succeeded in making the sheep 
subject to his domination. But the bal- 
ance is not all on one side. The sheep has 
fewer pains, as well as fewer pleasures ; less 
toil, as well as less power. If it does not know 
how to make a coat, at least it succeeds in 
growing its own natural wool clothing, and 
that without taxation. Above all, the sheep 
is not troubled with any of those vain dreams 
of moral responsibility and future life which 
are the cause of such great and needless 
trouble to humanity. The flocks that fed in 
the pastures of Bethlehem got just as much 



Straiffljt J&entuma 



physical happiness out of existence as the 
shepherd David who watched them; and, 
being natural agnostics, they were free from 
David's errors in regard to religion. They 
could give all their attention to eating, drink- 
ing, and sleeping, which is the chief end of 
life. From the materialistic standpoint, a 
man may be a little better than a sheep, but 
not much. 

Or suppose, in the second place, that we 
take the commercial view of life. AVe shall 
then say that all things must be measured 
by their money value, and that it is neither 
profitable nor necessary to inquire into their 
real nature or their essential worth. Men 
and sheep are worth what they will bring in 
the open market ; and this depends upon the 
supply and demand. Sheep of a very rare 
breed have been sold for as much as five or 
six thousand dollars. But men of common 
stock, in places where men are plenty and 
cheap (as for example in Central Africa), 
may be purchased for the price of a rusty 
musket or a piece of cotton cloth. Accord- 
ing to this principle, we must admit that the 
comparative value of a man and a sheep is 
a very uncertain matter, and that there are 



a Jttan 7 

times when the dumb animal is much the 
more valuable of the two. 

Of course, you perceive that this view, 
carried out to its logical conclusions, means 
slavery ; and you call my attention to the 
fact that slavery has been abolished, by com- 
mon consent of the civilized world. Yes, 
thank God, that is true. We have done 
away with the logical conclusion. In this 
land, at least, men and sheep are no longer 
put up at the same block to be disposed of 
to the highest bidder. We have gotten rid 
of the logical conclusion. But have we got- 
ten rid entirely of the premise on which it 
rested? Does not the commercial view of 
life still prevail in civilized society ? 

" How much is that man worth ? " asks the 
curious inquirer. " That man," answers the 
animated Commercial Registry and Business 
Directory, " is worth a million dollars ; and 
the man sitting next to him is not worth a 
penny." What other answer can be given 
by one who judges everything by a money 
standard ? If wealth is really the measure of 
value, if the end of life is the production or 
the acquisition of riches, then humanity must 
take its place in the sliding scale of com- 



8 §>tratgj)t Sermons 

modities. Its value is not fixed and certain. 
It depends upon accidents of trade. We 
must learn to look upon ourselves and our 
fellow-men purely from a business point of 
view, and to ask only : What can this man 
make ? how much has that man made ? how 
much can I get out of this man's labour ? 
how much will that man pay for my services ? 
Those little children that play in the squalid 
city streets, — they are nothing to me or to 
the world ; there are too many of them, they 
are worthless. Those long -fleeced, high- 
bred sheep that feed upon my pastures, they 
are among my most costly possessions, they 
will bring an enormous price, they are im- 
mensely valuable. How much is a man 
better than a sheep ? What a foolish ques- 
tion ! Sometimes the man is better ; some- 
times the sheep is better. It all depends 
upon the supply and demand. 

Now these two views of life, the material- 
istic and the commercial, always have ex- 
isted and do still exist in the world. Men 
have held them consciously and uncon- 
sciously. At this very day there are some 
who profess them ; and there are many who 
act upon them, although they may not be will- 



9 



ing to acknowledge them. They have been 
the parents of countless errors in philosophy 
and sociology ; they have bred innumerable 
and loathsome vices and shames and cruel- 
ties and oppressions in the human race. It 
was to shatter and destroy these deadly false- 
hoods, to sweep them away from the mind 
and heart of humanity, that Jesus Christ came 
into the world. We cannot receive his gos- 
pel in any sense, we cannot begin to under- 
stand its meaning and purpose, unless we 
fully, freely, and sincerely accept his great 
revelation of the divine dignity and inesti- 
mable value of man as man. 

We say this was his revelation. Un- 
doubtedly it is true that Christ came to re- 
veal God to man. But undoubtedly it is 
just as true that He came to reveal man to 
himself. He called himself the Son of God, 
but He called himself also the Son of Man. 
His nature was truly divine, but his nature 
was no less truly human. He became man. 
And what is the meaning of that lowly birth 
in the most helpless form of infancy, if it be 
not to teach us that humanity is so related 
to Deity that it is capable of receiving and 
embodying God himself ? He died for man. 



10 Straijrti ^ermcnfi 

And what is the meaning of that sacrifice, 
if it be not to teach us that God counts no 
price too great to pay for the redemption of 
the human soul ? This gospel of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ contains the high- 
est, grandest, most ennobling doctrine of 
humanity that ever has been proclaimed 
on earth. It is the only certain cure for 
low and debasing views of life. It is the 
only doctrine from which we can learn to 
think of ourselves and our fellow-men as we 
ought to think. And I ask you to consider 
for a little while to-day the teachings of 
Jesus Christ in regard to the dignity and 
worth of a man. 

Suppose, then, that we come to Him with 
this question : How much is a man better 
than a sheep ? He will tell us that a man 
is infinitely better, because he is the child of 
God, because he is capable of fellowship with 
God, and because he is made for an immortal 
life. And this threefold answer will shine 
out for us not only in the words, but also in 
the deeds, and above all in the death, of the 
Son of God and the Son of Man. 

I. Think, first of all, of the dignity of a 
man, as the offspring and the likeness of 



& f&m 11 

God. This was not a new doctrine first pro- 
claimed by Christ. It is clearly taught in 
the magnificent imagery of the Book of Gene- 
sis. The chief design of that great picture 
of the beginnings is to show that a Personal 
Creator is the source and author of all things 
that are made. But next to that, and al- 
most, perhaps altogether, of equal impor- 
tance, is the design to show that man is incal- 
culably superior to all the other works of 
God, — that the distance between him and 
the lower animals is not a difference in de- 
gree, but a difference in kind ; yes, the dif- 
ference is so great that we must use a new 
word to describe the origin of humanity, and 
if we speak of the stars and the earth, the 
trees and the flowers, the fishes, the birds 
and the beasts, as the works of God, when 
man appears we must find a nobler name 
and say, This is more than God's work, it 
is God's child. 

Our human consciousness confirms this 
testimony and answers to it. We know that 
there is something in us which raises us infi- 
nitely above the things that we see and hear 
and touch, and the creatures that appear at 
least to spend their brief life in the auto- 



12 Straight Sermons 

matic workings of sense and instinct. These 
powers of reason and affection and conscience, 
and above all this wonderful power of free 
will, the faculty of swift, sovereign, volun- 
tary choice, belong to a higher being. We 
say not to corruption, Thou art my father, 
nor to the worm, Thou art my mother ; but 
to God, Thou art my father, and to the Great 
Spirit, In thee was my life born. Frail and 
mortal as our physical existence may be, in 
some respects the most frail, the most de- 
fenseless among animals, we are yet conscious 
of something that lifts us up and makes us su- 
preme. "Man," says Pascal, " is but a reed, 
the feeblest thing in nature ; but he is a reed 
that thinks. It needs not that the universe 
arm itself to crush him. An exhalation, a 
drop of water, suffice to destroy him. But 
were the imiverse to crush him, man is yet 
nobler than the universe, for he knows that 
he dies, and the universe, even in prevailing 
against him, knows not its power." 

Now the beauty and strength of Christ's 
doctrine of man lie not in the fact that He 
was at pains to explain and defend and justify 
this view of human nature, but in the fact 
that He assumed it with an unshaken convic- 



JHan 13 



tion of its truth, and acted upon it always 
and everywhere. He spoke to man, not as 
the product of Nature, but as the child of 
God. He took it for granted that we are 
different from plants and animals, and that 
we are conscious of the difference. " Con- 
sider the lilies," He says to us, "the lilies 
cannot consider themselves : they know not 
what they are, nor what their life means ; 
but you know, and you can draw the lesson 
of their lower beauty into your higher life. 
Regard the birds of the air : they are dumb 
and unconscious dependents upon the Divine 
bounty, but you are conscious objects of the 
Divine care ; are you not of more value than 
many sparrows ? " Through all his words 
we feel the thrilling power of this high doc- 
trine of humanity. He is always appealing 
to reason, to conscience, to the power of 
choice between good and evil, to the noble 
and God-like faculties in man. 

And now think for a moment of the fact 
that his life was voluntarily, and of set pur- 
pose, spent among the poorest and humblest 
of mankind. Remember that He spoke not 
to philosophers and scholars, but to peas- 
ants and fishermen and the little children of 



14 IHraifffjt Jkrmona 

the world. What did He mean by that? 
Surely it was to teach us that this doctrine 
of the dignity of human nature applies to man 
as man. It is not based upon considerations 
of wealth or learning or culture or eloquence. 
Those are the things of which the world 
takes account, and without which it refuses 
to pay any attention to us. A mere man, in 
the eyes of the world, is a nobody. But 
Christ comes to humanity in its poverty, in 
its ignorance, stripped of all outward attri- 
butes and signs of power, destitute of all 
save that which belongs in common to man- 
kind, — to this lowly child, this very beggar- 
maid of human nature, comes the King, and 
speaks to her as a princess in disguise, and 
sets a crown upon her head. And I ask you* 
if this simple fact ought not to teach us 
how much a man is better than a sheep. 

II. But Christ reveals to us another and 
a still higher ground of the dignity of man 
by speaking to us as beings who are capable 
of holding communion with God, and reflect- 
ing the divine holiness in our hearts and lives. 
And here also his doctrine gains clearness 
and force when we bring it into close con- 
nection with his conduct. I suppose that 



iltan 15 



there are few of us who would not be ready- 
to admit at once that there are some men and 
women who have high spiritual capacities. 
For them, we say, religion is a possible thing. 
They can attain to the knowledge of God 
and fellowship with Him. They can pray, 
and sing praises, and do holy work. It is 
easy for them to be good. They are born 
good. They are saints by nature. But for 
the great mass of the human race, this is out 
of the question, absurd, impossible. They 
must dwell in ignorance, in wickedness, in 
impiety. 

But to all this Christ says, No ! No, to 
our theory of perfection for the few. No, to 
our theory of hopeless degradation for the 
many. He takes his way straight to the 
outcasts of the world, the publicans and the 
harlots and sinners ; and to them He speaks 
of the mercy and the love of God and the 
beauty of the heavenly life : not to cast them 
into black despair ; not because it was impos- 
sible for them to be good and to find God, 
but because it was divinely possible, — be- 
cause God was waiting for them, and because 
something in them was waiting for God. 
They were lost, — but surely they never 



16 §>traig;{)t Sermons 

could have been lost unless they had first of 
all belonged to God ; and this makes it pos- 
sible for them to be found again. They were 
prodigals, — but surely the prodigal is also a 
child, and there is a place for him in the 
father's house. He may dwell among the 
swine, but he is not one of them : he is ca- 
pable of remembering his father's love, he is 
capable of answering his father's embrace, 
he is capable of dwelling in his father's house 
in filial love and obedience. 

That is the doctrine of Christ in regard to 
fallen and disordered and guilty human na- 
ture. It is fallen, it is disordered, it is guilty ; 
but the capacity of reconciliation, of holiness, 
of love to God, still dwells in it, and may be 
quickened into a new life. That is God's 
work, but God himself could not do it if man 
were not capable of it. 

Do you remember the story of the portrait 
of Dante which is painted upon the walls of 
the Bargello, at Florence ? For many years 
it was supposed that the picture had utterly 
perished. Men had heard of it. but no one 
living had ever seen it. But presently came 
an artist who was determined to find it again. 
He went into the place where tradition said 



iflan 17 



that it had been painted. The room was used 
as a storehouse for lumber and straw. The 
walls were covered with dirty whitewash. 
He had the heaps of rubbish carried away. 
Patiently and carefully he removed the white- 
wash from the wall. Lines and colours long 
hidden began to appear. And at last the 
grave, lofty, noble face of the great poet 
looked out again upon the world of light. 

" That was wonderful," you say, " that 
was beautiful ! " Not half so wonderful as 
the work which Christ came to do in the 
heart of man, — to restore the likeness of 
God and bring the divine image to the light. 
He comes to us with the knowledge that 
God's image is there, though concealed ; He 
touches us with the faith that the likeness 
can be restored. To have upon our hearts 
the impress of the divine nature, to know 
that there is no human being in whom that 
treasure is not hidden, and from whose stained 
and dusty soul Christ cannot bring out that 
reflection of God's face, — that, indeed, is to 
feel the dignity and value of humanity, and 
to know that a man is better than a sheep ! 

III. There is yet one more element in 
Christ's teaching in regard to the dignity and 



18 Straij&t Sermons 

value of man ; and that is his doctrine of 
immortality. This truth springs inevitably 
out of his teaching in regard to the ori- 
gin and capacity of human nature. A being 
formed in the divine image, a being cap- 
able of reflecting the divine holiness, is a 
being so lofty that he must have also the 
capacity of entering into a life which is not 
dependent upon the nourishment of meat and 
drink, and in which the spiritual powers shall 
be delivered from the bondage of sense and 
the fear of death, so that they may be un- 
folded to perfection. All that Christ teaches 
about man, all that Christ offers to do for 
man, links him to a vast and boundless fu- 
ture. 

This idea of immortality runs through 
everything that Jesus says and does. Never 
for a moment does He speak to man as a 
creature of this present world. Never for a 
moment does He forget, or suffer us to forget, 
that our largest and most precious interests 
lie in the world to come. He would arouse 
our souls to perceive and contemplate the 
immense issues of life. The perils that beset 
us here through sin are not brief and momen- 
tary dangers, possibilities of disgrace in the 



a ;ptan 19 

eyes of men, of suffering such limited pain 
as our bodies can endure in the disintegrating 
process of disease, of dying a temporal death, 
which at the worst can only cause us a few 
hours of anguish. A man might bear these 
things, and take the risk of this world's 
shame and sickness and death, for the sake 
of some darling sin. But the truth that 
flashes on us like lightning from the word of 
Christ, is that the consequence of sin is the 
peril of losing an immortal spirit. " I will 
forewarn you," says He, " whom ye shall 
fear: fear Him which after he hath killed 
hath power to cast into helt; yea, I say unto 
you, fear Him." 

On the other hand, the opportunities that 
come to us here, through the grace of God, 
are not merely opportunities of temporal 
peace and happiness, they are chances of 
securing endless and immeasurable felicity, 
wealth that can never be counted or lost, 
peace that the world can neither give nor 
take away. We must understand that now 
the kingdom of God has come near unto us. 
It is a time when the doors of heaven are 
open. We may gain an inheritance incor- 
ruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not 



20 S>trai£J)t ^rtmons 

away. We may lay hold, not only on a 
present joy of holiness, but on an everlasting 
life with God. 

It is thus that Christ looks upon the chil- 
dren of men. not as herds of dumb driven 
cattle, but as living souls moving onward to 
eternity. It is thus that He dies for men, 
not to deliver them from brief sorrows, but 
to save them from final loss, and to bring 
them into bliss that knows no end. It is 
thus that He speaks to us, in solemn words 
before which our dreams of earthly pleasure 
and power and fame and wealth are dis- 
sipated like unsubstantial vapours : ; ' TThat 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul ? or what shall 
a man give in exchange for his soul ? " 

There never was a time in which Christ's 
doctrine of the dignity and value of a man 
as man was more needed than it is to-day. 
There is no truth more important and neces- 
sary for us to take into our hearts, and hold 
fast, and carry out in our lives. For here 
we stand in an age when the very throng and 
pressure and superfluity of human life lead 
us to set a low estimate upon its value. The 



a i«an 21 

air we breathe is heavy with materialism and 
commercialism. The lowest and most de- 
basing views of human nature are freely pro- 
claimed and unconsciously accepted. There 
is no escape, no safety for us, save in coming 
back to Christ, and learning from Him that 
man is the child of God, made in the divine 
image, capable of the divine fellowship, and 
destined to an immortal life. I want to tell 
you just three of the practical reasons why 
we must learn this. 

We need to learn it in order to understand 
the real meaning, and guilt, and danger, and 
hatefulness of sin. 

Men are telling us, nowadays, that there 
is no such thing as sin. It is a dream, a de- 
lusion. It must be left out of account. All 
the evils in the world are natural and inevit- 
able. They are simply the secretions of hu- 
man nature. There is no more shame or 
guilt connected with them than with the ma- 
laria of the swamp, or the poison of the 
nightshade. 

But Christ tells us that sin is real, and that 
it is the enemy, the curse, the destroyer of 
mankind. It is not a part of man as God 
made him ; it is a part of man as he has un- 



22 §>trat£j)t Sermona 

made and degraded himself. It is the mar- 
ring of the divine image, the ruin of the 
glorious temple, the seK-mutilation and sui- 
cide of the immortal soul. It is sin that 
casts man down into the mire. It is sin 
that drags him from the fellowship of God 
into the company of beasts. It is sin that 
leads him into the far country of famine, and 
leaves him among the swine, and makes him 
fain to fill his belly with the husks that the 
swine do eat. Therefore we must hate sin, 
and fear it, and abhor it, always and every- 
where. When we look into our own hearts 
and find sin there, we must humble ourselves 
before God, and repent in sackcloth and 
ashes. Every sin that nestles within us is a 
part of the world's shame and misery. Every 
selfish desire that stirs within our souls is a 
part of that which has stirred up strife, and 
cruelty, and murder, and horrible torture, 
and bloody war among the children of men. 
Every lustful thought that denies our imagi- 
nation is a part of that which has begotten 
loathsome vices and crawling shames through- 
out the world. My brother-men, God hates 
sin because it ruins man. And when we 
know what that means, when we feel that 



23 



same poison of evil within us, we must hate 
sin as He does, and bow in penitence before 
Him, crying, " God be merciful to me a 
sinner." 

We need to learn Christ's doctrine of 
the dignity and value of humanity in order 
to help us to love our fellow-men. 

This is a thing that is easy to profess, but 
hard, bitterly hard, to do. The faults and 
follies of human nature are so apparent, 
the unlovely and contemptible and offensive 
qualities of many people thrust themselves 
so sharply upon our notice and repel us so 
constantly, that we are tempted to shrink 
back wounded and disappointed, and to re- 
lapse into a life that is governed by its dis- 
gusts. If we dwell in the atmosphere of a 
Christless world, if we read only those news- 
papers which chronicle the crimes and mean- 
nesses of men, or those realistic novels which 
deal with the secret vices and corruptions of 
humanity, and fill our souls with the un- 
spoken conviction that virtue is an old-fash- 
ioned dream, and that there is no man good, 
no woman pure, I do not see how we can 
help despising and hating mankind. Who 
shall deliver us from this spirit of bitterness ? 



24 Straight Sermon* 

Who shall take us by the hand and lead us out 
of this heavy, fetid air of the lazar-house and 
the morgue ? None but Christ. If we will go 
with Him, He will teach us not to hate our 
fellow-men for what they are, but to love 
them for what they may become. He will 
teach us to look not for the evil which is 
manifest, but for the good which is hidden. 
He will teach us not to despair, but to hope, 
even for the most degraded of mankind. 
And so, perchance, as we keep company 
with Him, we shall learn the secret of that 
divine charity which fills the heart with 
peace, and joy, and quiet strength. We 
shall learn to do good unto all men as we 
have opportunity, not for the sake of grati- 
tude or reward, but because they are the 
children of our Father, and the brethren of 
our Saviour. We shall learn the meaning 
of that blessed death on Calvary, and be 
willing to give ourselves as a sacrifice for 
others, knowing that he that turneth a sin- 
ner from the error of his ways shall save 
a soul from death and cover a multitude of 
sins. 

Finally, we need to accept and believe 
Christ's doctrine of the dignity and value 



ffim 25 



of humanity in order that it may lead us 
personally to God and a higher life. 

You are infinitely better and more precious 
than the dumb beasts. You know it, you 
feel it, you are conscious that you belong to 
another world. And yet it may be that 
there are some of you who forget it, and 
live as if there were no God, no soul, no 
future life. Your ambitions are fixed upon 
the wealth that corrodes, the fame that 
fades; your desires are towards the plea- 
sures that pall upon the senses ; you are bar- 
tering immortal treasure for the things which 
perish in the using. The time is coming 
when you must lie down like the dumb 
beast and crumble into dust. Nay, not like 
the beast, for to you shall come in that hour 
the still, small voice saying, " This night 
shall thy soul be required of thee." 

Thy soul, — why not think of it now ? 
The image of God is impressed upon it. 
The one thing needful for you is to know, 
and love, and serve Him who is the father of 
your spirit. 

Come then to Christ, who alone can save 
you from the sin which defiles and destroys 
your manhood. Come then to Christ, who 



26 Strata&t Sermons 

alone can make you good men and true, 
living in the power of an endless life. Come 
then to Christ, that you may have fellowship 
on earth with the Son of Man, and dwell 
with the Son of God forever, and behold his 
glory. 



II 

FAITH 
: SSEtt&out fait?) it is impossible to please jpim." 

Hebrews xi. 6. 



" SSRit&ottt fattf) it is impossible to please |)tm ." 

This is a short statement of a large truth. 
The plain language lends force and dignity 
to the thought. It needs no embroidered 
words, no jewelry of speech, to set it off. 
For truth, like beauty, shows best with least 
adornment. 

In trying to unfold the meaning of this 
text I would fain keep to that simplicity and 
clearness of which it gives us such a good 
model. There is no reason why religion 
should be made dark and difficult by talking 
about it in long, unfamiliar, antiquated words 
which cause people to wish for a dictionary ; 
nor is there any excuse for seeking to win 
the wonder and astonishment of men by ob- 
scure sayings and curious comparisons, — 
mountains of eloquence which labour long 
and violently to produce a little mouse of 
practical sense. In ancient times the teach- 



30 jFaitf) 

ers of the people were told to read in tlie 
book of the Law of God distinctly, and give 
the sense, and cause the people to understand 
the meaning. To reach that result no pains 
are too great, no effort is too costly. I would 
rather spend five days in trying to make a 
text clear and level to the mind, to open the 
door of it so that any one could walk in, 
than five minutes in trying to make it strange 
and mysterious, to cover it with all kinds of 
ornaments and arabesques so that nobody 
should be able to find the keyhole and un- 
lock the door. 

Religion is full of mysteries. The object 
of the Bible is not to increase them, but to 
remove them. If a certain amount of mys- 
tery still remains, it lies in the subject, and 
not in the way in which it is treated. For 
the most part, the teachings and rules of the 
Scriptures are so clear and direct that the 
wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err 
therein ; they shed light and not darkness ; 
they disperse the clouds to reveal the sun. 

Take the declaration of the text : " With- 
out faith it is impossible to please God." 
How easy it is to see just why the writer of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews inserted that sen- 



Jattj) 31 

tence where it stands ! He is writing about 
the heroes of faith, — the men and women 
who, from the very beginning of the world, 
have been bound together into one company 
by this great principle of all true and noble 
life. Among them he counts the patriarch 
Enoch. But as we look back to the brief 
record of Enoch's life in the Book of Genesis 
we find that not a word is said there about 
his faith. By what right, then, is he included 
in the list ? Why is he counted among the 
faithful ? "I will tell you why," says the 
writer of the Epistle : " it is because he ob- 
tained this testimony, that he pleased God. 
This is proof positive that he must have had 
faith. Where you find a flower, you know 
there must have been a seed. Where you 
find a river, you know there must be a spring. 
Where you see a flame, you know there 
must be a fire. Where you find a man be- 
loved and blessed of God, you know there 
must be faith. Whether it is recorded or 
not, whether you can see it or not, it must 
be there, germ of his virtue, fountain-head of 
his goodness, living source of warmth and 
light ; for without faith it is impossible to 
please God." 



32 J&tratfi&t ^ermona 

How simple and how beautiful is that 
phrase, — to please God. What a sense of 
nearness to the Divine Being it gives us. 
How it discloses God's nature and character. 
What a noble statement of the true aim of 
life. 

God can be pleased, then. He is not a 
cold abstraction, an immovable substance, a 
dull, unimpassioned, silent, joyless, mighty- 
force. He is a person, capable of affections 
and emotions. He is a heart that feels. De- 
light is no stranger to Him. His love is no 
vague, blind impulse, flowing dumbly to- 
wards all things alike. It is a seeking, choos- 
ing love ; and when it finds the object of its 
search, a thrill of gladness passes through it, 
larger, purer than we can understand, and 
yet like that which comes to us when we see 
the fairest and the best. He approves and 
blesses. His Spirit is filled with the music 
of pleasure. 

To waken that music, to win that ap- 
proval, to please God, — surely that is the 
highest and holiest object for a human life. 

To please men is a natural impulse. 
There is no one who does not desire in some 
degree to obtain the liking and favour of 



Jattl) 33 

his fellow-creatures. But presently, as we 
come to know by experience how shallow and 
how fickle are the fashions of the world, how 
false and often how impure are the motives by 
which the liking of the crowd is influenced, 
how easily it is gained by accident and lost 
by chance, we begin to see that this kind of 
surface favour is deceitful, and to look for 
something better. 

To please good men, — that is a nobler 
ambition. To win the confidence and honour 
of those who are honest and earnest and up- 
right ; to speak some word, to do some deed, 
to exercise some virtue, of which those who 
think deep thoughts, and lead pure lives, and 
perform noble actions, shall say, " That was 
right, that was true, that was kind, that was 
brave," — this is a motive which has always 
been potent in the most generous breasts, 
restraining them from evil, nerving them 
to heroic efforts, stimulating them to dare 
and to do. 

But there is a motive deeper and more in- 
tense than even this : it is the desire to please 
that one among our fellow-creatures whom 
we have chosen, it may be, as the most loyal 
heart and true ; to pluck some flower from 



34 §trais:l)t Sermons 

the lofty crags of duty : to win some honour- 
able trophy in the world's great battlefield, — 
yes, even though that trophy be but the scar 
received in warring for the right, the banner 
which has been torn and stained in an un- 
equal conflict, but never dishonoured : to 
do something, to endure something, which 
shall really please the one who is to us the 
best and dearest on earth, — how many a 
soul has been quickened, and uplifted, and 
strengthened to face danger, disgrace, and 
death by that profound desire ! 

But to please God, the perfect, radiant 
Being, the most wise, the most holy, the most 
beautiful, the most loving of all Spirits ; to 
perform some task, achieve some victory, 
bring some offering that shall be acceptable 
to Him, and in which He shall delight ; 
simply to live our life, whatever it may be. 
so that He, the good and glorious God, shall 
approve and bless it, and say of it, M ^Vell 
done," and welcome it into the sense of His 
own joy, — that is a divine ambition. 

u "VThat vaster dream could hit the mood 
Of loTe on earth ? " 

It has sustained martyrs at the stake, and 
comforted prisoners in the dungeon, and 



jFatt& 35 

cheered warriors in the heat of perilous con- 
flict, and inspired labourers in every noble 
cause, and made thousands of obscure and 
nameless heroes in every hidden place of 
earth. It is the pillar of light which shines 
before the journeying host. It is the secret 
watchword of the army, given not to the 
leaders alone, but flashing like fire through 
all the ranks. When that thought descends 
upon us, it kindles our hearts and makes them 
live. What though we miss the applause of 
men; what though friends misunderstand, 
and foes defame, and the great world pass us 
by ? There is One that seeth in secret, and 
followeth the soul in its toils and struggles, 
— the great King, whose approval is honour, 
whose love is happiness ; to please Him is 
success, and victory, and peace. 

There are a million ways of pleasing Him, 
as many as the characters of men, as many 
as the hues and shades of virtue, as many as 
the conflicts between good and evil, as many 
as the calls to honest labour, as many as the 
opportunities of doing right and being good. 
That is the broad meaning of this eleventh 
chapter of the Hebrews, with its long roll 
of different achievements, with its list of 



36 Straight ^eracm* 

men and women of every age, of every quality 
and condition, slaves and freemen, leaders 
and followers, warriors and statesmen, saints 
and sinners, and silent martyrs, and name- 
less conquerors ; there are a million ways 
of pleasing God, but not one without faith. 
Numberless forms of energy, but none with- 
out heat. Myriad colors of beauty, but 
none without light. All is cold and black 
until the sun shines. A universe of possibili- 
ties of goodness spreads before you, but not 
one of them can be realized unless you have 
faith. For without faith it is impossible to 
please God. 

But why should this be so ? Is it an arbi- 
trary requirement which the Divine Being 
makes of his creatures, or is there a deep 
reason for it in the nature of men and the 
conditions of human life ? I do not believe 
that God is ever arbitrary. He is indeed 
omnipotent, and He has the power to demand 
of us whatsoever He will. But there is al- 
ways a wise and holy reason in his demands. 
Sometimes we cannot understand it ; it lies too 
deep for us. But sometimes w r e can under- 
stand it ; it lies within our reach. And in 
the present case I think we can easily see 



JFattJ) 37 

just why faith is necessary to the success of 
every effort to please Him. 

Faith is not a strange and far-away thing 
which can only be explained to us by a reve- 
lation. It is a principle of common life. 
We exercise it every day. It is simply the 
confidence in something which is invisible ; 
as the Apostle says, " it is the substance of 
things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
seen." Every time you receive the testimony 
of your fellow-men, every time you trust in 
the qualities of their character which are be- 
yond the reach of your vision, every time you 
rely upon a law of logic in an argument, 
upon a law of nature in your action, upon a 
law of morality in your conduct, you exercise 
faith. It is the condition of reason, of ac- 
tivity, of human society. " All polities and 
societies," says a wise observer, " have come 
into existence through the trust of men in 
each other," and, we may add, through 
their trust in unseen principles of equity, and 
in future results of prudence, and in One 
higher than themselves whom they could 
neither see nor name. Take away confidence 
in the invisible, and the whole fabric decays, 
crumbles, and falls in ruin. 



38 l>tratgl)t Sermon* 

Thus, even from the human point of view, 
faith is necessary. But from the Divine 
point of view, it must appear infinitely more 
essential. 

Man is made to know as much as possible, 
to do as much as possible, and to be as good 
as possible. In the sphere of knowledge, in 
the sphere of action, in the sphere of charac- 
ter, faith is the one element that gives life 
and power to please God. 

I. Look first at the sphere of knowledge, 
the understanding of the world and of life. 
We stand in a strange and mysterious uni- 
verse, with certain faculties to help us to a 
comprehension of it. First, we have the 
senses, and they tell us how things look, and 
taste, and sound, and feel. Then we have 
the reasoning powers, and they enable us to 
discover how things are related to each other, 
how causes are followed by effects, how great 
laws control their action and reaction. But 
is there not something beyond this, a depth 
below the deep and a height beyond the 
height ? Every instinct of our nature as- 
sures us that there must be. The lesson of 
modern thought is the limitation of science 
and philosophy. But outside of this narrow 



jFaitj) 39 

circle lie the truths that we most desire 
and need to know. In that unexplored 
world dwells God. Why should we hesi- 
tate to confess that we must have another 
and a higher faculty of knowledge ? The 
astronomer has keen eyes, but he knows 
their limitation, and he does no discredit to 
them when he uses the telescope to bring 
near the unseen stars. The entomologist 
has quick sight, but he does not disparage 
it when he turns to the microscope to search 
a drop of water for its strange, number- 
less forms of life. Reason is excellent and 
forceful, but beyond its boundaries there 
is a realm which can only be discerned by 
faith. Where science ends, where philoso- 
phy pauses, faith begins. 

" By faith we understand that the worlds 
have been framed by the word of God, so that 
what is seen hath not been made out of things 
which do appear." 

Mark the words : By faith we understand. 
It is a principle of comprehension, then, not 
of confusion ; something which clarifies and 
enlarges the vision. It discloses not only 
the origin but also the purpose and the 
meaning of things. It is not the contradic- 



40 Straight Sermons 

tion. but the crown and complement of reason. 
How can God be pleased with any knowledge 
from which this element is left out ? 

Suppose that you had written a book, and 
some one should take it up and measure it, 
and say : " This curious object is composed 
of cloth, paper, ink, glue, and thread. It is 
seven inches long, five inches wide, and two 
inches thick : it contains rive hundred pages 
and a hundred thousand words, and I wonder 
where it came from and what it is for." 
Would that please you ? 

Suppose that you had carved a statue, and 
some one should find it and say : *• This re- 
markable stone is composed of carbonate of 
lime ; it is very smooth and white, and it 
weighs about six hundred pounds, and I 
think I have explained it perfectly.'' Would 
that satisfy you ? Would you not be better 
pleased with the chilcL or the ignorant j 
ant. who stood and looked at your statue and 
felt its beauty, and recognized that it had 
been made by some one to represent a great, 
a noble, a lovely idea ? 

The world was made for its meaning, to 
show forth the wisdom, power, and goodness 
of God. If we do not see that, we see nothing. 



JFaitb 41 

We may be able to tell how many stars are 
in the Milky Way ; we may be able to 
count the petals of every flower, and num- 
ber the bones of every bird; but unless 
faith leads us to a deeper understanding, a 
more reverent comprehension of the signifi- 
cance of the universe, God can no more be 
pleased with our knowledge than the painter 
is pleased with the fly which touches his pic- 
ture with its feelers, and sips the varnish 
from the surface, and dies without dreaming 
of the meaning, thought, feeling, embodied 
in the colours. But on the simplest soul 
that feels the wonder and the hidden glory 
of the universe, on the child to whom the 
stars are little windows into heaven, or the 
poet to whom 

' ' the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,' ' 

God looks down with pleasure and ap- 
proval. For in such a soul He sees the be- 
ginning of faith, which is able to pass behind 
the appearance to the reality, and make its 
possessor wise unto everlasting life. 

II. Turn now to the sphere of action. 
Here faith is no less necessary. There are 
some who would persuade us that believing 



42 ^traifljt Sermons 

is appropriate only to infancy and old age ; 
that it is a kind of dreaming, an infirmity of 
the weak and visionary. But the truth is 
otherwise. Carlyle says : " Belief is great, 
life-giving. The history of a nation becomes 
fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it 
believes. A man lives by believing some- 
thing, not by debating and arguing about 
many things." Faith is power. It makes 
men strong, ardent, persistent, heroic. No- 
thing truly great has ever been done in any 
department of the world's work without faith. 
Think of the faith of our explorers and dis- 
coverers, — Columbus, who found the New 
World ; the Pilgrim Fathers, who planted it 
with life ; Livingstone, who opened a new 
continent to civilization. Think of the faith 
of our men of science, — Galileo, Kepler, 
Newton, Faraday, Henry. Think of the 
faith of the reformers, — "Wyclif , Luther, 
Knox. Think of the faith of the martyrs, — 
Polycarp, Huss, Savonarola, the Covenanters 
of Scotland, the Huguenots of France. Faith 
is a force, and those who grasp it lay hold 
of something which is able to make them 
mightier than themselves. 

Let a man fasten himself to some great 



jFaitf) 43 

idea, some large truth, some noble cause, 
even in the affairs of this world, and it will 
send him forward with energy, with stead- 
fastness, with confidence. This is what 
Emerson meant when he said, " Hitch your 
wagon to a star." These are the potent, 
the commanding, the enduring, the inspiring 
men, — in our own history, men like Wash- 
ington and Lincoln. They may fall, they 
may be defeated, they may perish ; but on- 
ward moves the cause, and their souls go 
marching on with it, for they are part of it, 
they have believed in it. 

And if the cause be divine, if the idea 
come from above, if the action be impelled 
by faith in God and a resolve to do his will, 
then how dauntless and impregnable does it 
make the heart in which it dwells ! Paul 
standing alone against the mocking, sneering 
world to testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, 
" I believe and therefore speak : " Luther 
riding into the city of Worms, though every 
housetop were thronged with devils, and ap- 
pearing alone before the imperial council, 
" Here stand I, I cannot do otherwise, God 
help me : " Morrison, the first missionary to 
China, standing alone on the deck of the ship 



44 Straight Sermons 

that bears him to a strange and hostile world : 
" Do you think," says the captain, " that you 
will make an impression upon 400,000,000 
Chinese ? " " No, sir," is the reply, " but I 
believe that God will : " — that is faith, — 
everywhere and always the victory that over- 
cometh the world. 

I will make a personal confession to you. 
Very often it seems to me as if there were 
one, and only one, great and essential differ- 
ence among the multitudes of people who 
inhabit this earth. Moving about among 
them, coming into contact with them, I find 
that some men and women seem unreal, 
hollow, visionary, masks without faces, cos- 
tumes without character. They run in the 
grooves of custom, they drift to and fro on 
the currents of fashion, they are blown up 
and down by the winds of popular opinion ; 
even when they seem to lead, it is only as 
the lightest leaf is carried along foremost 
by the gale. They are only animated shad- 
ows, without principle or probity, wdthout 
conviction or consistency, wdthout faith or 
fidelity. But other men and women seem 
real, and true, and genuine. There is some- 
thing behind their looks, their words, their 



jFatt!) 45 

actions. They have power to touch, and 
move, and satisfy the heart, because they be- 
lieve. Have you never felt the difference ? 
Do you think that God does not feel it ? 
Can a mask, a shadow, however fair or 
orderly, please Him ? Will He withhold his 
approval and blessing from any real, honest, 
struggling, believing soul? 

But perhaps some may be thinking just 
now : " This is the old story that the 
preacher is telling us ; he is singing the same 
old song about faith, — and still faith, — 
and always the necessity of faith ! Why not 
lay more emphasis on works ? Surely they 
are more important. He has just told us 
that there are many ways of pleasing God. 
There are many courses of good conduct 
open to us all. If we follow any one of 
them, that is enough. So long as a man's 
actions are right it makes no difference what 
lies behind them, it makes no difference 
whether he believes or not." Do you really 
think so? Is there no difference between 
a body without a spirit and a body with a 
spirit ? Does not the thought, the motive, 
the purpose count for something ? 

Here are a multitude of people giving their 



46 §>traifl;l)t Sermons 

money to support the Temple. And many 
rich men, standing beside the treasury, cast 
in their gifts ; from habit, from a desire to 
appear well before the world, from a hope 
of reward. A poor widow comes with her 
two mites; she knows her gift will be de- 
spised, she fears it may be laughed at, but 
she believes that God wants her to do what 
she can, and that He will not refuse her 
offering. So her coppers fall in among the 
gold and the silver, and the Lord of the 
treasury blesses her, and says, M She hath 
given more than they all." 

Here are two women going down to work 
among the sick and the poor. One goes be- 
cause there is a fashion of it, because she 
would fain have the credit which belongs to 
the lady bountiful. She moves among them 
like an iceberg, and they hate her. She 
brings a chill with her which all her coals 
and blankets can never warm away. The 
other goes because she believes in it, believes 
that God wants her to do it, believes that 
the sorrowful and the distressed are Christ's 
brethren, and that she is bound to them, and 
that they have immortal souls which she may 
win for Him. She moves among them like 



Jaitf) 47 

a sister of Jesus and a friend of God ; and 
of her the Master says, " Inasmuch as she 
hath done it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, she hath done it unto me." 

Here are two men praying. One stands 
upon the corner of the street, correct, punc- 
tilious; at the appointed time he lifts his 
hands, he raises his voice that he may be 
heard of men. The other kneels in the 
dust, ignorant, stammering, feeble ; he lifts 
his face to Christ and says, " Lord, I believe, 
help thou mine unbelief." And that broken, 
stammering cry of honest faith pleases God, 
and brings the blessing which would never 
come to the Pharisee though he stood on the 
street corner till the crack of doom. 

Let us never be so foolish as to think that 
it makes no difference whether we believe or 
not. Faith is the soul of conduct ; faith is 
the bloom, the breath, the vital power of 
religion ; without it, virtue is the alabaster 
box, empty ; faith is the precious ointment 
whose fragrance fills the house. Therefore 
without faith it is impossible to please God. 

III. Finally, faith is necessary because it 
is the only possible way of contact between 
God and man, the only way in which He 



48 Straight Sermona 

can draw near to us, and save and bless us. 
And that, if you will believe it, is the one 
thing that He most desires to do. There is 
no compulsion laid upon Him. He does not 
act as one who is performing an indifferent 
task. He is so good that He longs to deliver 
us from sin and death, to bring us to him- 
self, to give us a place in his happy king- 
dom. This is his glory and his delight : 
to rescue the perishing, to raise the fallen, 
to forgive the sinful, to give life to the dying. 
He loves this work so much that He sent 
his own dear Son into the world to accom- 
plish it. And nothing that you can do will 
please Him so much as simply to let Him 
save you, and help you to be good. 

Think for a moment : what can you do for 
any one who does not trust you, who does 
not believe in you ? Nothing. That barrier 
of mistrust stands like a wall of ice between 
you and the soul that you desire to help. Is 
there anything that wounds you more than 
to be doubted and denied, and thrust away 
in suspicion or indifference ? Truly that is 
the deepest and most bitter pain. Is there 
anything that pleases you more than to be 
trusted, — to have even a little child look up 



jFaitf) 49 

into your face, and put out its hand to meet 
yours, and come to you confidingly ? By so 
mucli as God is better than you are, by so 
much more does He love to be trusted. 

Yes, I know you are trying to be good, — 
fitfully, imperfectly, yet still trying. But 
there is something else that God would have 
you do first. He would have you believe 
that He wants you to be good, that He is 
willing to help you to be good, that He has 
sent his Son to make you good. 

There is a hand stretched out to you, — a 
hand with a wound in the palm of it. Reach 
out the hand of your faith to clasp it, and 
cling to it, for without faith it is impossible 
to please God. 



Ill 

COURAGE 

" SSSait on t&e iorlr : be of 500U courage, anU &e 
afcall strengthen t&tne Jeart" 

Psalm xxvii. 14. 



" SSRatt on t&e Lot* : be of ffootr cottraje, an* jje 
g&all dtrentjtjjen tl)tne fccart" 

This is a sermon about courage, one of 
the simplest and most straightforward of the 
virtues; necessary, and therefore possible, 
for every true and noble human life. 

It is a quality that we admire by instinct. 
We need no teacher to tell us that it is a 
fine thing to be brave. The lack of cour- 
age is universally recognized as a grave de- 
fect in character. If in our own hearts we 
feel the want of it, if we cannot find enough 
of it to enable us to face the dangers and 
meet the responsibilities and fight the bat- 
tles of life, we are not only sorry, but se- 
cretly ashamed. The absence of courage is 
a fault that few are willing to confess. We 
naturally conceal it, and cover it up, and 
try to keep it secret even from ourselves. 
We invent favourable names for it, which 
are only unconscious excuses. We call it 



54 ^tratj&t Sermona 

prudence, or respectability, or conserva- 
tism, or economy, or worldly wisdom, or the 
instinct of self-preservation. For in truth 
there is nothing that we are more reluctant 
to admit than cowardice ; and there is no 
virtue which we would more gladly possess 
and prove than courage. 

In the first place, it is an honourable 
virtue. Men have always loved and praised 
it. It lends a glory and a splendour to the 
life in which it dwells, — lifts it up and en- 
nobles it, and crowns it with light. The 
world delights in heroism, even in its rudest 
forms and lowest manifestations. Among 
the animals we create a sort of aristocracy 
on the basis of courage, and recognize, in the 
fearlessness of the game beasts and birds 
and fishes, a claim to rank above the timor- 
ous, furtive, spiritless members of creation. 

And in man bravery is always fine. We 
salute it in our enemies. A daring foe 
is respected, and though we must fight 
against him we can still honour his courage, 
and almost forget the conflict in our admira- 
tion for his noble bearing. That is what Dr. 
Johnson meant by saying, " I love a good 
hater." The enemy who slinks and plots 



Courage 55 

and conceals — makes traps and ambus- 
cades, seeks to lead his opponent into dan- 
gers which he himself would never dare to 
face — is despicable, serpentine, and con- 
temptible. But he who stands up boldly 
against his antagonist in any conflict, physi- 
cal, social, or spiritual, and deals fair blows, 
and uses honest arguments, and faces the 
issues of warfare, is a man to love even across 
the chasm of strife. An outspoken infidel 
is far nobler than a disguised skeptic. A 
brave, frank, manly foe is infinitely better 
than a false, weak, timorous friend. 

The literature of courage has always been 
immensely popular, and the history of the 
brave is written in letters of gold. It is this 
that men have loved to read in the strange, 
confused annals of war, — deeds of self -for- 
getful daring which leap from the smoke 
and clamour of battle, and shine in the sud- 
den making of splendid names. It is the 
quality which levels youth with age, gives to 
woman the force of manhood, equalizes the 
peasant with the noble, and consumes all out- 
ward distinctions in the flame of glory. The 
boy Casabianca keeping the solitary deck of 
the burning vessel rather than disobey his 



56 Straight Sermon* 

father's commands ; the brave Lady Douglas 
thrusting her tender arm through the staple 
of the door to defend her king from the as- 
sassin ; Leonidas at Thermopylae, and Hora- 
tius at the bridge, and the Six Hundred at 
Balaklava ; old Cranmer bathing his hands 
in fire at the martyr's stake, and young 
Stephen praying fearlessly for his murder- 
ers ; Florence Nightingale facing fever in 
Crimean hospitals ; Father Damien braving 
leprosy in the Islands of the Sea ; young men 
and maidens, old men and matrons, fighting, 
suffering, achieving, resisting, enduring, dar- 
ing, living, and dying — it is the spark of 
heroism that kindles their names into the 
blaze of light, for everywhere and always 
courage is an honourable virtue. 

In the second place, courage is a service- 
able virtue. There is hardly any place in 
which it is not useful. There is no type of 
character, no sphere of action, in which there 
is not room and need for it. 

Genius is talent set on fire by courage. 
Fidelity is simply daring to be true in small 
things as well as great. As many as are 
the conflicts and perils and hardships of life, 
so many are the uses and the forms of cour- 



Courage 57 

age. It is necessary, indeed, as the pro- 
tector and defender of all the other virtues. 
Courage is the standing army of the soul 
which keeps it from conquest, pillage, and 
slavery. 

Unless we are brave we can hardly be 
truthful, or generous, or just, or pure, or 
kind, or loyal. " Few persons," says a wise 
observer, "have the courage to appear as 
good as they really are." You must be 
brave in order to fulfil your own possibili- 
ties of virtue. Courage is essential to guard 
the best qualities of the soul, and to clear 
the way for their action, and make them 
move with freedom and vigour. 

" Courage, the highest gift, that scorns to bend 
To mean devices for a sordid end ; 
Courage, an independent spark from Heaven's throne, 
By which the soul stands raised, triumphant, high, alone ; 
The spring of all true acts is seated here, 
As falsehoods draw their sordid birth from fear." 

If we desire to be good, we must first 
of all desire to be brave, that against all op- 
position, scorn, and danger we may move 
straight onward to do the right. 

In the third place, courage is a comfort- 
able virtue. It fills the soul with inward 
peace and strength ; in fact this is just what 



it is, — courage is simply strength of heart. 
Subjection to fear is weakness, bondage, 
feverish unrest. To be afraid is to hare no 
soul that we can call our own : it is to be 
at Hie beck and call of alien powers, to be 
chained and driven and tormented ; it is 1 
lose the fife itself in the anxious care to keep 
h- Many people are so afraid to die that 
they have never begun : Bve. But courage 
emancipates us and gives ns ymrsetrea, 
that we may give ourselves freely and with- 
out fear to God. How sweet and clear and 
steady is the life into which this virtue e:: 
day by day, not merely in those great flashes 
of excitement which come in the moinen: - : 
crisis, but in the presence of the hourly per- 
ils, the continual conflicts. H : trend le 
the shadows which surroun . ns, fee :irink 
from the foes who threaten us, not to hesitate 
and falter and stand despairing still among 
:.:r p-r:lrxir-r5 ll::;! trials of czx life, b.:: ::• 
move steadily onward without fear, if only 
we can keep ourselves without reproach, — 
sorely that is what the Psalmist mean 
good courage and strength of heart, and it 
a most comfortable, pleasant, peaceful, and 
happy virtue. 



Courage 59 

Let us talk together for a while about 
this virtue and consider what we mean by 
it, how we can obtain it, and what good it 
will do us. 

I. First of all, let us try to understand the 
difference between courage and some of the 
things which are often mistaken for it. 

There is a sharp distinction between cour- 
age and recklessness. The reckless man is 
ignorant ; he rushes into danger without 
hesitation, simply because he does not know 
what danger means. The brave man is in- 
telligent ; he faces danger because he under- 
stands it and is prepared to meet it. The 
drunkard who runs, in the delirium of intoxi- 
cation, into a burning house is not brave ; 
he is only stupid. But the clear-eyed hero 
who makes his way, with every sense alert 
and every nerve strung, into the hell of 
flames to rescue some little child, proves his 
courage. 

The more keenly we are awake to the 
perils of life, the higher and grander is the 
possibility of being truly brave. To drift 
along, as some people do, through this 
world of sin, as if there were nothing in it 
to fear ; to slide easily downward, as some 



a . . t.. r , . 



Ax to the gale of dezriu as if tine 

- — tI- ~: . i: .- »:~t :: :: It.it — — .ii: 15 
" •- ir : in :: :._- ::.:! ~: -:1 5.1:1 
.15 j-Tir: TttTt - z '_-■/_.. :-:- Is r_: 
g> judgment"? Bat to fare the 
i-i T'r:~ _t~~t- 11: -. i~ r^-*? ;:' 
:'-- -::'.'. —.-.'1 ::" ~ -. 'ir_r :: :'r^: :•: 7ii«. 
— ■.:.!:-: it-tZi": *_=ig :t :!- iir> txtt^ :: 
::: rr:~T m 1 :::.::_ :i:: is ^:::t: : ~,i ~ 
fear; to dare to five in the presence of the 

_I~t T".?^ IH^Tc"!! ITT 1t:1T. TT^LT 15 

TJ1*t7t 15 




Courage 61 

a more sensitive nature would be profoundly- 
agitated. Now we must not suppose for a 
moment that this insensibility makes them 
brave. It simply exempts them in some 
measure from the necessity of courage. The 
bravest soul is that which feels the tremor 
and resists it, shrinks from the flame and 
faces it. Never was a better soldier than the 
old French marshal Montluc, who said that 
he had often gone into battle shaking with 
fear, and had recovered courage only when he 
had said a prayer. A pale face, a trembling 
hand, yes, even a heart that stands still with 
dread, may belong to a hero who is brave 
enough to carry them into the midst of con- 
flict without faltering or failing, straight on 
to victory or death. Courage does not con- 
sist in the absence of fear, but in the con- 
quest of it. 

Take it in little things. Here is the 
great, dull, heavy dray-horse ; what is it for 
him to move stolidly on through noises which 
do not alarm him, and past strange objects 
which he does not notice ? But when the 
high-mettled, keen-sensed thoroughbred goes 
through the same tumult, and past the same 
objects, with every nerve and muscle quiver- 



62 Htfrats&t Harmons 

ing, that is courage. It demands no great 
effort for the voyageur, who is inured to 
hardships and trained to steadiness, to guide 
his frail canoe through the foaming rapids. 
But for a woman who is by nature sensitive 
and timid, to sit quiet and silent in the boat, 
not because she has no fear, but because she 
will not yield to it, — that is brave. 

The same thing is true in moral trials. 
There are some people to whom reproach 
and ridicule and condemnation mean little. 
They simply do not care ; they are pachyder- 
matous. But there are others to whom the 
unkind word is like a blow, and the sneer 
like a sword-thrust, and the breath of con- 
tempt like the heat of flames ; and when 
they endure these things and face them, and 
will not be driven by them from the path of 
duty, they are truly courageous. 

Do you understand what I mean ? Tim- 
idity is no more inconsistent with courage 
than doubt is inconsistent with faith. For 
as faith is simply the overriding and sub- 
jugating of doubt by believing where you 
cannot prove, so courage is simply the con- 
quest and suppression of fear by going 
straight on in the path of duty and love. 



Courage 63 

There is one more distinction that needs 
to be drawn, — the distinction between cour- 
age and daring. This distinction is not in 
kind, but in degree. For daring is only a 
rare and exceptional kind of courage. It 
is for great occasions ; the battle, the ship- 
wreck, the conflagration. It is an inspi- 
ration ; Emerson calls it " a flash of moral 
genius." But courage in the broader sense 
is an every-day virtue. It includes the pos- 
sibility of daring, if it be called for ; but 
from hour to hour, in the long, steady run of 
life, courage manifests itself in quieter, hum- 
bler forms, — in patience under little trials, 
in perseverance in distasteful labours, in en- 
durance of suffering, in resistance of con- 
tinual and familiar temptations, in hope and 
cheerfulness and activity and fidelity and 
truthfulness and kindness, and such sweet, 
homely virtues as may find a place in the 
narrowest and most uneventful life. 

There is no duty so small, no trial so 
slight, that it does not afford room for cour- 
age. It has a meaning and value for every 
phase of existence ; for the workshop and for 
the battlefield, for the thronged city and 
for the lonely desert, for the sick-room and 



64 Straight fttnrunui 

for the market-place, for the study and for 
the counting-house, for the church and for 
the drawing-room. There is courage phy- 
sical, and social, and moral, and intellec- 
tual, — a soldier's courage, a doctor's cour- 
age, a lawyer's courage, a preacher's courage, 
a nurse's courage, a merchant's courage, a 
man's courage, a woman's courage, — for 
courage is just strength of heart, and the 
strong heart makes itself felt everywhere, 
and lifts up the whole of life, and enno- 
bles it, and makes it move directly to its 
chosen aim. 

II. Now, if this is what we mean by cour- 
age, how are we to obtain it ? What is it 
that really strengthens the heart and makes 
it brave ? 

Well, there are many lesser things that 
will help us, such as a simple and wholesome 
physical life, plain food and vigorous exer- 
cise, a steady regard for great moral princi- 
ples and ideas, a healthful course of reading, 
a sincere friendship with brave and true and 
single-minded men and women, a habit of 
self-forgetfulness and consecration to duty. 
But of these things I have not time to speak, 
for there is something greater and better 



Courage 65 

than any of these, — something which in fact 
includes them all and sums them up in a 
a word, " Wait on the Lord." That is the 
truest and deepest source of courage. To 
believe that He is, and that He has made us 
for himself ; to love Him, and give ourselves 
up to Him, because He is holy and true and 
wise and good and brave beyond all human 
thought ; to lean upon Him and trust Him 
and rest in Him, with confidence that He 
will never leave us nor forsake us ; to work 
for Him, and suffer for his sake, and be 
faithful to his service, — that is the way 
to learn courage. 

Without God what can you do ? You are 
a frail, weak, tempted, mortal creature. The 
burdens of life will crush you, the evils of 
sin will destroy you, the tempests of trouble 
will overwhelm you, the darkness of death 
will engulf you. But if you are joined to 
God, you can resist and endure and fight 
and conquer, in his strength. This is what 
the Psalmist means in the text, " Wait on 
the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall 
strengthen thy heart." So runs our trans- 
lation. The scholars tell us that it ought 
to read, " Be of good courage and let thy 



66 Straiff^t Sermons 

heart be strong." But the meaning is the 
same. For the courage conies from the 
waiting on God, and He is the giver of 
strength to the heart. 

" If it had not been the Lord who was on 
our side, now may Israel say, then the 
proud waters had gone over our souls." It 
was the Lord who stood by them and sus- 
tained them through the storm. Hear 
Paul : " If God be for us, who can be 
against us ? " And again, " I can do all 
things through Christ who strengthened 
me." And then hear Christ : " My meat 
is to do the will of Him that sent me, and 
to finish his work." That is the secret of 
courage. The lamp that is joined to the 
electric current glows with light. The soul 
that is joined to the infinite source of cour- 
age in God, burns steadfast, serene, and 
inextinguishable through life and death. 

III. And now let us ask, how will that 
divine courage help us if we obtain it? 
What will it do for us ? 

Everything. There is no good thing that 
we really desire and need that will not be 
brought nearer to us by this strength of 
heart. Every day and every hour of our 



Ccmraje 67 

lives it will be a help, a joy, a treasure, a 
blessing to us. 

You men have to go through with your 
daily toil, and face the perplexities of busi- 
ness life, and resist the temptations to dis- 
honesty and meanness and uncleanness which 
touch you on every side. You must be brave, 
and if you are brave in Christ you will win. 

You women have to meet your daily house- 
hold cares, and suffer the pains and trials 
which belong to a woman's life, and re- 
strain your lips from scandal and your hearts 
from jealousy and envy, and keep your souls 
up above the deadening influences of lux- 
ury and frivolity and fashion. You must 
be brave, — never does courage shine more 
brightly than in a true woman, — and if you 
are brave you will " adorn the doctrine of 
God our Saviour " with the charm of pure, 
unselfish, lovely character and conduct which 
is a rebuke to all grossness of demeanour, 
and an encouragement to all knighthood and 
true chivalry. For such women men would 
even dare to die. 

You boys and girls at school, young men 
and maidens at college, have to do your 
work honestly, and speak the truth fear- 



Straight §>ermona 



lessly, and avoid evil companionship stead- 
fastly, and live up to your principles mod- 
estly and firmly. You must be brave, and 
sometimes very brave, to do this, and if you 
have the right courage in the conflicts of 
youth you will be trained by them to play a 
noble part in the great battle of life. 

And the preacher who speaks to you has 
to face the constant, exhausting demands of 
a minister's life, to declare the divine mes- 
sage without fear or favour, to search the 
Scriptures and tell men plainly what they 
teach, without regard to human traditions ; 
caring nothing for old doctrines or new doc- 
trines, but simply and solely for the truth as 
it is in Jesus, and following it with absolute 
loyalty whithersoever it may lead. Surely 
the man who has to do this needs courage, 
in order that he may be neither ashamed of 
the old nor afraid of the new, but always 
faithful to the true. 

Indeed, we all have the same need. For 
every one of us, there is nothing more de- 
sirable, nothing more necessary, than real 
strength of heart. If we can obtain it from 
the divine and only source, it will make our 
lives straight and clean and fine. It will 



Courage 69 

enable us to follow Jesus of Nazareth, who 
was not only the purest and the gentlest, but 
also the bravest Spirit that ever dwelt on 
earth. 

And do you think, if that kind of courage 
comes into our hearts, — the courage of 
faith, which believes in spite of difficulties, 
and fights its way through doubt to a firmer 
assurance ; the courage of confession, which 
overcomes all dread of ridicule or reproach, 
and is not ashamed of Christ nor of his 
words, but ready to preach the Gospel at 
Rome also ; the courage of life, which goes 
on trying to be good in spite of failures, and 
holding fast to the ideal in spite of temp- 
tations, and warring for the right in spite of 
heavy odds, and bearing the appointed bur- 
den in spite of weariness, straight through to 
the end : do you think the courage of death 
will fail us ? We do not know when we shall 
have to meet that last conflict, that ultimate 
adventure. But when the hour comes, if we 
have been brave enough to live aright, we 
shall be brave enough to die at peace. 

" Sunset and evening 1 star, 
And one clear call for me ! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea, 



70 Straight Sermons 

" But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home ! 

" Twilight and evening bell, 
And after that the dark ! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
When I embark ! 

" For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 
The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crost the bar." 



IV 

POWER 

© (BflU, t&ott art mp <0oU ; earlp toili 3T seefc 
t&ee : mp goul t&ircitetb for t&ee. ♦ ♦ ♦ Cn see 
tl)p potoer an* t&p glorp, so ad 3f fcatoe seen tj)ee 
ia t&e sanctuarp/' 

Psalm lxiii. 2. 

SCftat 3T map fcnoto $>im, ana t&e potoer of \\& 
resurrection/' 

/%//. iii. 10. 



" 2£o m t^p potoer antr \l? fflorp, go aa 3f (ate 
seen t&e* in t&e aanctttarp." 

• 2Tl)at S map fenoto $>im, an* t&e potoet of jjis 
refittmction." 

Here are two men separated by centuries, 
— the psalmist of the old dispensation and 
the apostle of the new dispensation, — utter- 
ing the deepest desire of their hearts. In 
both of them we find that there is an earnest 
and ardent longing to see, to know, the 
power of God. In both of them there is the 
recognition of a place, a way, in which that 
power is manifested and in which it may be 
discerned ; in both of them there is the con- 
fident expectation that the knowledge of 
that power, when it is attained, will be 
potent in its spiritual effect upon their lives. 
Now we may be quite sure that the thing 
for which David and Paul longed so ardently 
is something which we also ought to desire, 
and pray for, and seek after. If they needed 



74 Straight Sernums 

it, we need it. If it was possible for them 
to find it, it is possible for us. If it was 
good for them, it will be good for us. Let 
us think about it for a little while ; for it 
is only by thinking about great and good 
things that we come to love them, and it is 
only by loving them that we come to long 
for them, and it is only by longing for 
them that we are impelled to seek after them, 
and it is only by seeking after them that 
they become ours and we enter into vital 
experience of their beauty and blessedness. 

Is not this the reason why our lives often 
seem so narrow and poor and weak, why they 
have such a sense of limitation and constric- 
tion in them, why their interests seem so 
trivial, their possibilities so small, their re- 
sults so feeble, why we often appear to our- 
selves barren in thought and dry in feeling, 
empty of hope and bankrupt in power ? Is 
it not because we think so much of the things 
that are petty and narrow and barren and 
transient, and so little of the things that are 
great and fruitful and glorious and eternal ? 
These dry and thirsty lives of ours, these 
dull, stale, flat, and unprofitable lives of ours, 
these paltry lives, — whose fault is it that 



ftntoer 75 

they are so? Ours, and ours alone. For 
the riches of an infinite wealth and the pow- 
ers of an immeasurable strength are all about 
us waiting for us to possess and use them. 
But there is only one way in which we can 
enter into their possession, and that is by 
thinking about them, by considering them 
earnestly and steadily until they draw us to 
themselves. 

The strength of your life is measured by 
the strength of your will. But the strength 
of your will is just the strength of the wish 
that lies behind it. And the strength of 
your wish depends upon the sincerity and 
earnestness and tenacity with which you fix 
your attention upon the things which are 
really great and worthy to be loved. This 
is what the Apostle means when he says, at 
the close of his description of a life which is 
strong, and inwardly renewed, and growing 
in glory even in the midst of affliction, — 
"while we look not at the things which 
are seen, but at the things which are un- 
seen." It is while we look that we learn 
to love. It is by loving that we learn to 
seek. And it is in seeking that we find and 
are blessed. 



76 Jma:r:r Jr::~:-2 

* Let us be sure, then, that it is no mere 
profitless speculation abon: mysteries of no 
practical Talue to which our double text 
:--.-:: rs us. I: is a rhvu'h; that enriches. 
ennobles, strengthens, blesses. It is a medi- 
tation by which our lives will be enlarged and 
uplifted and invigorated. It is for the sake 
of a joy which will be like music in our souls 
among life's discords ; it is for the sake of a 
strength of spirit which will be to us like a 
wind from heaven sending us forward on our 
course as ships that cleave the waves and 
triumph against the tides ; it is in order that 
we may "have life, and have it more abun- 
dantly," that we are asked to think about the 
powerful knowledge of the power of God. 

L TTe may inquire, first, why should we 
wish to see and know the power of God? 

Well, it seems to me that the vision of 
power is always wonderful and admirable 
and, in a certain sense, beautiful, and there- 
fore a thing to be desired for its own sake. 
The perception of a mighty force in action, 
even in the physical world, confers a high 
and noble pleasure on the mind. When the 
force is sudden and violent, as in the case of 
- r.r?..: :t™^s:. v: ;;: leisure :r. ::^IioV:uZi it 



flotoer 77 

is mixed with awe, it is a solemn and trem- 
bling delight ; it may be overshadowed with 
fear, or with pity for the misfortunes of 
those who have been overwhelmed by the 
storm ; yet the force in itself is magnificent, 
and the sight of it thrills and expands the 
soul. But when it is an orderly and benefi- 
cent force that we behold, then the vision is 
one of pure and unmingled joy. How glo- 
rious, for example, is the sight of a great 
river sweeping down from its source among 
the mountains to its resting-place in the sea. 
How it forces its way among the hills, cut- 
ting through the rocks and carving a channel 
for itself in the solid earth, leaping boldly 
from the cliffs, and rushing down the steep 
inclines with an energy which needs but to 
be harnessed to do the work of a million 
men, — this is power, we say, power visible, 
and it is a grand thing to see. And the same 
thing is true of the resistless tides of the 
ocean on which we look with unending won- 
der and pleasure ; true also of the might of 
the imprisoned giant Steam as we see it 
whirling the wheels of some great engine 
and driving the vast ship by day and night 
through leagues of rolling waters. 



78 H>ttats!)t ^>enwm$ 

But it is far more true of those forces 
which are more silent and secret, like the 
heat of the sun, or the force of gravitation. 
We become aware of these forces not so 
much through our senses alone as through 
our thought, our inward perception. Look 
at a blade of corn cleaving the ground, and 
remember that all over the world countless 
millions upon millions of them are pushing 
upward with a power which taken altogether 
is simply incalculable ; and all this lifting of 
tons of bread out of the earth to the hand of 
man is simply the drawing of the sun that 
shines above you. Look at the starry heavens 
on a clear still night ; companies, regiments, 
battalions, armies of worlds, all marching 
without haste and without rest, keeping pace 
in their majestic orbits ; and the force that 
binds them to their courses is the same that 
quietly loosens the ripened apple from the 
bough and drops it at your feet. Surely a 
thought like this is a vision of power, and it 
is good for the soul. 

But it is doubly good to know that it is 
all the power of God. To understand that 
all the mighty energy which throbs and pulses 
through the universe, comes from Him, that 



Potter 79 

force is but the effluence of his will, and 
law but the expression of his wisdom ; to 
stand before some vast manifestation of 
power in nature and feel that it is only an 
infinitesimal fraction, only a passing play of 
the omnipotence of God ; to see Him hurl 
Niagara into the gulf more easily than you 
would pour a glass of water on the ground, 
— is good for the soul. It humbles and 
exalts. It begets that awe of spirit which 
is essential to true religion. We want a 
mighty God, one who can hold the winds 
and the waves in the hollow of his hand. 
And for our own sake, for the sake of a 
deeper reverence and a firmer confidence 
towards Him, we ought to wish to see the 
evidence of divine power in the great ele- 
mental forces of nature. 

But there is another kind of power still 
more wonderful, still more impressive than 
that of which we have been speaking. It is 
spiritual power, — the power which is mani- 
fested in the conquest of evil, in the triumph 
of virtue, in the achievements and victories 
of a moral being. This is grander and more 
admirable than any physical force that has 
ever acted upon the universe of matter. 



80 Straight Sermons 

" For tho' tlie giant ages heave the hill 
And break the shore, and evermore 
Make and break, and work their will ; 
Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll 
Around us, each with different powers 
And other forms of life than ours, 
What know we greater than the soul ? " 

The vision of spiritual power, even as we 
see it in the imperfect manifestations of hu- 
man life, is ennobling and uplifting. The 
rush of courage along the perilous path of 
duty is finer than the foaming leap of the 
torrent from the crag. Integrity resisting 
temptation overtops the mountains in gran- 
deur. Love, giving and blessing without 
stint, has a beauty and a potency of which 
the sunlight is but a faint and feeble image. 
When we see these things they thrill us 
with joy ; they enlarge and enrich our souls. 

And if that is true, how much more satis- 
fying and strengthening must it be to behold 
the spiritual power of God ? For God also 
is a soul, the Great Soul ; the essence of his 
being is not physical but moral ; and the 
secret of his strength is in his holiness, 
righteousness, justice, goodness, mercy, and 
love. To know something of the force of 
the great Spirit ; to see that there is no 



JJotoer 81 

temptation that can even shake the strong 
foundation of his equity, no evil that can 
finally resist the victorious sweep of his holy 
will, no falsehood that can withstand the 
penetrating flash of his truth, nothing that 
can limit or exhaust the great tide of his 
love ; to catch sight of the workings of One 
who is omnipotent against all foes and there- 
fore triumphant over the last enemy, death, 
— that is a vision of joy and power far 
beyond all others, and therefore it is to be 
desired and prayed for and sought after with 
the whole heart. 

But, after all, we have not yet touched the 
deepest and strongest reason why we should 
long to see and know the power of God. 
We have been moving hitherto upon the sur- 
face ; let us pierce now to the centre. The 
great reason why we need to consider God's 
power is because we are utterly dependent 
on that power for the salvation of our souls. 
Without it there is no peace, no hope, no 
certainty. Unless God is mighty to save, 
we can never be saved. 

The religion of the Bible differs from all 
others in two points. The first is, that it 
makes salvation the hardest thing in the 



82 Strata:!)! Sermxm* 

world. The second is, that it makes salva- 
tion the easiest thing in the world. 

How lofty, how inaccessible is the stand- 
ard of holiness revealed in this religion. 
How immense are its requirements and condi- 
tions. Other religions set before us ideals 
which seem by comparison like the foothills 
of the Jura, somewhat more elevated indeed 
than the surrounding valleys, but still smooth 
and easy, with gradual paths and footholds. 
But Christianity lifts Mont Blanc before our 
ey-s. serene, remote, awful in its dazzling 
splendour, and bids us climb to holiness 
without which no man shall see God. M Be 
ye perfect, even as your father which is in 
en is perfect." What hope is there of 
attaining to that shining height ? 

I wonder if any of you have ever had the 
feeling that has come to me in reading 
Christ's Sermon on the Mount. It is a feel- 
ing of QTeat distance and almost intolerable 
remoteness. — a feeling as if one should come 
to a mighty cliff, towering far up into heaven, 
crowned with eternal beauty and radiance, 
and hear a voice crying from that far height, 
i; Come up hither and dwell with me ! " 
When I listen to those wonderful beatitudes, 



#oto*t 83 

when I hear those searching demands for a 
purity which is stainless in deed, in word, in 
thought, and in feeling, when I see how 
strait is the gate and how narrow is the way 
that leadeth unto life, a sense of utter help- 
lessness sweeps through me and my spirit is 
overwhelmed within me. 
" And is not the same thing true even when 
we take shorter and more limited views of 
the duties and requirements of the Christian 
life ? Here are these faults and vices and 
evil habits with which we have been strug- 
gling. We have used all the force that we 
have against them, and yet they are not ex- 
tirpated. How shall they ever be conquered ? 
Is it not a hopeless conflict ? Here we have 
been trying to do our duty, and putting all 
our hearts into the effort to be good and to 
do good, and yet so little is accomplished, so 
far do we come short. More must be done ; 
we must be better ; we must live higher and 
holier and more useful lives. But where is 
strength to come from since we have already 
used all that we possess ? How shall we over- 
come greater difficulties when we have already 
taxed ourselves to the uttermost in coming 
thus far? how render larger service when 



84 ^traigbt §ermuns 

we have already strained our powers to the 
breaking-point ? Xext year's temptations, 
how shall we conquer them? Next year's 
work, how shall we do it ? 

Not even the wise and needful reminder 
that the Christian life is gradual is sufficient 
to deliver us from this sense of helplessness. 
It is true, of course, that "heaven is not 
reached at a single bound," that only to-day's 
burdens are to be borne to-day, that growth . 
in grace is like the blade and the ear and 
the full corn in the ear : and it helps us 
immensely to remember this. But. after all. 
this does not quite reach the heart of our 
trouble. Even a power which is to be grad- 
ually exercised has its limits. Steam can 
do so much, and no more. Electricity can do 
so much, and no more. But the Christian 
life is unlimited : it rises forever : it ad- 
vances without encl : its goal is perfection. 
What does it profit the blade of corn to go 
on maturing its poor little kernels, if at last 
it will be required to bear some celestial and 
imperishable fruit ? What does it advan- 
tage the pilgrim to climb painfully the lower 
slopes, if the summit of the pass is inaccessi- 
ble ? Some little human goodness, some ad- 



$otoer 85 

vance in virtue, we may perhaps attain ; but 
a perfect holiness is out of our reach. Look 
at heaven, — a kingdom of unsullied love ; 
look at the life of the glorified saints, sor- 
rowless, tearless, sinless, dwelling in perfect 
and deathless f eilowship with God, — is not 
that beyond our power ? 

Yes, it is ; and yet it is the ideal set before 
us in the word of God ; and therefore we say 
that the Bible makes salvation the hardest 
thing in the world, makes it something that 
woidd be impossible and hopeless, if it did 
not at the same time make it easy and acces- 
sible and possible for every human soul. 
For this is what the Bible does : it reveals 
that our salvation is all of God ; it reveals 
that the power that worketh in us is his 
power, and that it is able to do exceeding 
abundantly above all that we can ask or 
think. 

And now we can see the real reason why 
the Psalmist and the Apostle prayed so ear- 
nestly to know the power of God, and why 
the truest and best of human souls have 
always repeated that prayer in many forms 
and in many languages, and why we ought 
to take it up and make it truly our own. 



86 is>traia!)t Sernuma 

It is because that power is our hope and our 
salvation. David was a strong man, but lie 
knew that lie could never conquer sin in his 
own strength. Paul was a strong man, but 
he knew that he was often unable to do the 
things that he would ; he knew that he was 
not sufficient for these things; the spirit 
was willing, but the flesh was weak ; he felt 
that he was bound like a captive to a body of 
sin and death. And so they both longed and 
cried, so we should long and cry, to know 
something greater than human strength, even 
the power of the mighty God unto salvation. 

II. Well, then, we come to our second 
question : How may this spiritual power of 
God be known ? 

There is a twofold answer ; and yet it 
is really one, for both parts of it belong to- 
gether, and the latter supplements and com- 
pletes the former, even as the sunrise is the 
fulfilment of the dawn. 

The Psalmist says, " My soul thirsteth for 
thee, to see thy power and thy glory, even as 
I have seen thee in the sanctuary." By this 
I think he means that the power of God may 
be known in the experiences of religion. Not 
only in his own soul, as he has confessed his 



flotoer 87 

sin and found pardon, as lie has prayed for 
help and been strengthened, as he has asked 
for deliverance and been lifted out of the 
horrible pit and the miry clay, as he has 
implored guidance and been led in a plain 
path, — not only in his own soul, but also in 
the souls of his brother-men who have been 
delivered in the same perils, and helped in 
the same conflicts, and strengthened in the 
same sanctuary by humble faith and earnest 
prayer and true surrender to the Spirit of 
God, the Psalmist has seen the workings of 
Divine power, and so he longs to see them 
again. 

The same vision is open to us. Every 
grace that God has given to us in the past, 
every touch of his life that has quickened 
us, every assistance of his Spirit that has 
supported us and given us a victory over 
evil, is a proof and evidence of his power. 
Let us remember and trust. 

Was it long ago, or was it but yesterday, 
that we came to Him with that heavy weight 
of sin, and, asking for relief, found it? Come 
then, and, kneeling at his feet to-day, with a 
yet heavier load, it may be, prove the same 
almighty strength to deliver from sin. Was 



88 Straight Sermons 

it long ago, or was it yesterday, that we felt 
that thrill of new life, of consecration, of 
devotion passing through us as we gave our- 
selves to God? Come then, and, renewing 
the gift to-day, feel again the same touch of 
power. Was it long ago, or was it but yes- 
terday, that we prayed for strength to per- 
form a certain duty, to bear a certain burden, 
to overcome a certain temptation, and re- 
ceived it? Do we dream that the Divine 
force was exhausted in answering that one 
prayer? No more than the great river is 
exhausted by turning the wheels of one mill. 
Put it to the proof again with to-day's duty, 
to-day's burden, to-day's temptation. Thrust 
yourself further and deeper into the stream 
of God's power, and feel it again, as you 
have felt it before, able to do exceeding 
abundantly. Remember and trust. " Thou 
hast been my help : leave me not, neither 
forsake me, O God of my salvation." 

But there are times when these memories 
of power experienced in the past grow faint 
and dim, times when it seems that all we can 
see behind us is a long succession of failures, 
and all we can feel now is a pervading sense 
of weakness. At such times it is good to 



flotoer 89 

consider the mighty things which God has 
wrought in and through other lives. He has 
lifted the hands that hung down, and strength- 
ened the feeble knees. He has made the 
evil good ; the sinful, pure ; the selfish, gener- 
ous ; the base, noble. He has made apostles 
and saints out of men and women that the 
world would have thrown away as rubbish. 
Why, the whole New Testament is just a 
record of that, — Peter, the weak and way- 
ward ; Mary Magdalen, the defiled ; Zac- 
cheus, the worldly ; Thomas, the despond- 
ent; Paul, the persecutor and blasphemer. 
What God could do in the first century, He 
can do, He is doing, to-day. 

What is it that we want ? Is it faith to 
conquer doubt ? There are men and women 
all around us believing in the face of dif- 
ficulties greater than ours. Is it patience 
under trials ? There are men and women 
all around us who are bearing trials as 
heavy as ours without a murmur. Is it 
usefulness ? Consider the mighty works that 
God has wrought through the hands of man. 
Think of the great influence of the thou- 
sands of Sunday-schools scattered all over 
the world. How did that begin? In the 



N Jrtratgfct Sermons 

efforts of poor printer Robert Raikes to 
teach the ragged children of Gloucester. 

Think of the beautiful charity which carries 
vast multitudes of little ones every summer 
out of the crowded city into the fresh air 
of the country. How did that begin ? In 
ttempt of a country minister to bring 
a score of poor children to spend a few 
in the farmhouses of his scanty parish* 
What can wc Nothing. TVhat can 

God do with us? Anything: whatsoever 
He will. 

But perhaps you will say. •• His joes not 
help me so much, after all. For these men 
and women are separated from me. I do 
:::: i -:■.'.'.;.' „::_ ., :_;: :~_ T y i_ r . Tigr- 

is no bond between us, nothing to make me 
p.::.\Lier o: :lirir I:.:e. In f :;■:■:. they are so 
far above me that it humiliates me even to 
think of them, and if they knew me there is 
no reason to think that they could do any- 
thing else than look down upon me in mv 
selfishness, weakness, and sin." 

To one who is in this state of mind I think 
Paul is more helpful than David, the New 
Test anient more precious than the Old. Let 
us turn, then, to the way in which the apos- 



Poteet 91 

tie sought to know and feel the power of 
God. " That I may know Him," he cried, 
that is Christ, " and the power of his resur- 
rection." And in another place he said : 
" That ye may know what is the exceeding 
greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, 
according to the working of his mighty 
power which He wrought in Christ when He 
raised Him from the dead." That is the 
true proof and manifestation of the spiritual 
power of God ; the life and resurrection of 
Jesus Christ, conqueror of sin and death. 

Remember that it is a real human life, 
lived in the same flesh and blood, under 
the same conditions and limitations as ours, 
made human in order that it might be like 
ours. Remember that the strength of it is 
not physical but spiritual, the same Spirit of 
God dwelling in Jesus whom God promises 
to give to all that ask Him. Remember 
that its triumph over falsehood and tempta- 
tion and sin and death is one triumph, and 
that the resurrection is but the final working 
of the same power which worked all through 
the holy life of Jesus, so that He conquered 
the grave with the same might with which 
He overcame evil. Remember that this life 



92 Sttaig&t Sermons 

is given to us and for us, so that we may 
belong to it, as the branches belong to the 
vine, as the members belong to the body. 
Remember that Christ says : " Without me 
ye can do nothing, but lo ! I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world. He 
that belie veth on me, the works that I do 
shall he do also. Where I am, there shall 
ye be also." Remember these things, and 
we shall understand what Paul means by 
knowing the power of his resurrection. It 
is to know that the greatest spiritual power 
in the universe, the power which made Jesus 
Christ perfect in holiness, is ready to enter 
and work in us, and that He who raised 
up Jesus from the dead shall quicken our 
mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth 
in us. 

III. Now what practical effect will this 
knowledge of the mighty power of God have 
in our lives ? David thinks chiefly of one 
effect ; Paul chiefly of another. 

The prominent thought in the psalm is 
the joy that comes from seeing God's power : 
" My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow 
and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee 
with joyful lips." And surely that is a good 



flotoet 93 

thing. Joy is essential to true religion. A 
gloomy religion is far from God. A sad 
gospel is a contradiction in terms, like a 
black sun. " Behold," said the angel, " I 
bring you good tidings of great joy, which 
shall be to all people." And that message 
was simply the news of a great power which 
had appeared in the world for salvation. 
David, indeed, did not hear this message 
in its fulness, did not see this power in 
its perfection. But he heard the promise of 
it, he felt the thrill of its coming. His hope 
was in God. " I have set the Lord always 
before me ; because He is at my right hand I 
shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is 
glad and my glory rejoiceth ; my flesh also 
shall rest in hope." Yes, God is light, God 
is love, God is power ; and therefore God is 
hope. 

Little does he know of true joy who knows 
not this. Lightly, foolishly, falsely does he 
think of the great resistant force of evil, 
the tremendous difficulties of being good, 
the vast inertia of a world lying in sin, who 
exults in aught else than the knowledge of a 
Divine power able to overcome it all. When 
we look at the follies and vices and crimes 



94 J§>trai2#t Sermons 

and shames wliicli still exist among men, 
when we see the immense obstacles which 
stand in the way of the spiritual progress of 
humanity, when we discern the dark and sul- 
len and obstinate influences which are potent 
in our own hearts, despair for ourselves and 
for the world seems natural, pessimism right 
and inevitable. Will the slender ray of light 
that shines on the mountain-top ever conquer 
the huge darkness ? 

Well, that depends on the source from 
which it springs. If it comes only from a 
fire kindled there by human hands, it will 
go out again when the fuel is exhausted. 
But if it comes from the sun, it will grow 
until the night is vanquished. And that is 
what the Bible tells us. Behind every mani- 
festation of spiritual life there is the Spirit. 
Behind Christianity there is Christ. Be- 
hind Christ there is God. For He is the 
brightness of the Father's glory, and the ex- 
press image of his person ; and the power 
that works in Him, the power that has raised 
Him from the dead and set Him at God's 
right hand in heavenly places, is the power 
that is saving every one that believeth, and 
reconciling the world to God. When we 



flotoet 95 

know that, despair ceases to exist, and joy 
fills the heart with music. 

But in Paul's mind there is another 
thought. It is the thought of the strength, 
the vigour, the energy that come from this 
knowledge. " This one thing I do," he says : 
" forgetting those things which are behind, 
and reaching forth unto those things which 
are before, I press toward the mark for the 
prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." And elsewhere, again and again, 
he expresses the same thought. At the close 
of that glorious chapter on the resurrection, 
in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, he 
says : " Therefore, my beloved brethren, be 
ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding 
in the work of the Lord." And again : 
" Work out your own salvation with fear 
and trembling, for it is God which worketh 
in you." And again : "I can do all things 
through Christ which stren^tkeneth me." 

That is the secret of strength ; to know 
the Divine power and to use it. The man 
who does not use it cannot really know it. 

The Christian who says, " I know the 
power of God, and I am trusting in that to 
save me, and sustain me, and make me useful, 



96 Strait S>etmona 

and bring me to heaven," and yet makes no 
real effort to be good or to do good, is like a 
man sitting on the bank of a mighty river, 
and casting chips upon its sweeping tide, and 
saying, " This river is able to bear me to my 
journey's end." What you need to do is to 
push your boat out into the current, and feel 
its resistless force, and move onward with it. 
Then you will know the power that now you 
only know about. 

Is there any reason why our lives should 
be feeble and stagnant and worthless? Is 
there any reason why we should not over- 
come temptation and endure trial, and work 
the works of God in the world, and come at 
last to the height of his abode in heaven ? 
Only one, — that we do not know Him who 
is able to do exceeding abundantly above all 
that we ask or think, according to the power 
that worketh in us. Lay hold on Him by 
faith and all things are possible. Let us 
clasp the hand of Christ and climb ; and as 
we climb He will lift us out of sin, out of 
selfishness, out of weakness, out of death, into 
holiness, into love, into strength, into life, 
and we shall know the power of his resur- 
rection. 



V 

REDEMPTION 

" lax pe are fiotts&t tottl) a prtte." 

I Corinthians vi. 20. 



" JFor pe are iouffjjt tott& a price/' 

The Apostle Paul thinks so much of this 
plain saying that he repeats it in the next 
chapter, as if to make sure that we should 
not forget it, nor fail to appropriate it in our 
lives. And in this he is right. For it is in- 
deed a word like a jewel, shining, precious, 
imperishable. If we rightly estimate its 
worth, if we take it into the treasury of our 
hearts, it will more enrich and ennoble us 
than the possession of royal gems. 

And yet it may seem strange to you that 
so much should be made of this saying. For 
what is it, after all, this confident and posi- 
tive assertion of the apostle, but the state- 
ment of a great debt which we owe and can 
never pay — a tremendous obligation rest- 
ing upon every one of us from which we can 
never escape? What does it tell us save 
that we have all been bought in the open 
market, as slaves are bought, — for so the 



100 H>traia!)t ^ermona 

Apostle's word signifies, — and that the price 
has been paid, and that henceforth we belong 
to a master ? Is not this a strange thing to 
rejoice over, as if it were a precious boon ? 

Certainly, it is a strange thing, but never- 
theless it is a true thing ; for, in regard to 
human life at least, truth is almost always 
stranger than fiction. That which is obvious 
and self-evident is frequently false, and gen- 
erally superficial. It is only by striking down 
into the hidden depths of our nature that 
we come to those paradoxes in which the 
essence of truth resides. " He that findeth 
his life shall lose it." That is a contradic- 
tion in terms, but it is a reality in experi- 
ence. " He that is greatest among you shall 
be your servant." That is a falsehood to the 
sense, but it is a truth to the soul. " He 
only is wise who knows himself to be a fool." 
To a little learning, that seems absurd, but 
to a profound philosophy it is the voice of 
wisdom. And so this saying of Paul's, 
which looks at first like a burden, an im- 
poverishment, a chain, is in fact an uplift- 
ing, an enrichment, an emancipation, for 
those who really understand it and translate 
it into life. 



Ketoemptton 101 



Think of this for a moment, and try to see 
what it means. There is a great truth here, 
if we can only get it into words. 

What is liberty ? It is the recognition of 
voluntary allegiance to the highest law. And 
what is the highest law ? It is the law of 
gratitude and love. Who, then, is free ? He 
who sees and feels the obligations which bind 
him to serve the highest and the best. The 
noblest, richest, fullest, purest life is that 
which has the deepest and strongest sense 
of indebtedness resting upon it always, and 
impelling it forward along the line of duty, 
which is also the line of joy. So, then, true 
liberty is the highest kind of bondage. 

Do you understand what I mean? Do 
these words of mine let even a glimmer of 
the truth shine through them ? Let us try to 
see it a little more clearly. There are three 
broad statements in regard to this life of ours 
that I want to submit to you. You shall 
pronounce your own judgment upon their 
truth. 

I. The sense of belonging to something is 
essential to our happiness. 

We are never without this sense, and there- 
fore we do not realize its importance. But 



102 Straight Sermons 

let us try for once to strip it away from us, 
and then perhaps we may feel what it means. 
You remember the story of " The Man with- 
out a Country." Endeavor now to construct 
in imagination the figure of a man without a 
world, without a fellow-man, without a God. 
I do not mean that you should try to think 
the world and humanity and God out of 
existence, so that you should stand alone in 
the universe. That, indeed, would be the only 
complete isolation, for as long as anything 
existed, your consciousness of it would make 
some kind of a bond between you and it. 
But stop short, for the present, of the hor- 
rible insanity of absolute loneliness in void 
space, and attempt only to cut yourself off 
from connection with all things that exist, so 
that you shall have no dependence and no 
obligation outside of yourself. 

You are independent. You have no par- 
entage ; for if you had, that would create a 
tie between you and those to whom you 
owed your being. You are not even the 
product of natural forces ; for if they had 
produced you, you would owe something to 
them. You have no place in the universe ; 
for if you had, you would be bound to fill it. 



ReHemptum 103 



You are not in the thoughts of God, if there 
be a God ; for if He thought of you, you 
would be responsible for meeting his thought. 
You are a rank outsider. You are superflu- 
ous, forgotten, obsolete, — "a looker-on in 
Vienna." All this mighty sum of " things 
forever working " goes on without you, and 
there is nothing for you to do ; for if you 
were needed anywhere, that need would cre- 
ate an obligation ; and since you are not 
needed, you dare not touch a finger to the 
work without presumption and interference. 
All these linked lives and related intelli- 
gences cling together and play into each 
other, and every one has a share in another 
and belongs to all the rest. But the chain 
is complete without you ; you are not in it. 
You have neither relation nor religion, for 
both of them consist in a bond and create a 
bondage. You are an independent atom, an 
outcast fragment of some extinct universe, 
dropped by chance into this world where all 
things belong together, — a foundling, a 
homeless thing. For you alone belong — 
Nowhere, and are the forsaken child of — 
Nothing ! 

Does not the mere contemplation of such 



104 Straight Sermon* 

a condition as that throw us back forcibly, 
almost violently, upon the truth that the joy 
of our life is a dependent joy, and that 
we can only come into true and happy pos- 
session of ourselves when we realize that we 
belong to something greater than ourselves ? 
As living beings we are part of a universe of 
life ; as intelligent beings we are in connec- 
tion with a great circle of conscious intelli- 
gences; as spiritual beings we have our 
place in a moral world controlled and gov- 
erned by the supreme Spirit. In each of 
these spheres there is a law, a duty, an obli- 
gation, a responsibility, for us. And our 
felicity lies in the discovery and acknow- 
ledgment of those ties which fit us and bind 
us to take our place, to play our part, to do 
our work, to live our life, where we belong. 

II. This leads us on at once to the second 
proposition about life. The true uplifting 
and emancipation of our life comes through 
the recognition of the higher ties and rela- 
tionships which bind us. 

I mean that the progress and elevation of 
the soul is a process of discovering, not that 
it is independent and masterless, but that the 
lower laws and conditions under which it 



EeUemption 105 



lives are subordinate to the higher laws, and 
that its bondage in a certain sphere becomes 
transformed into liberty when it is lifted up 
into a higher sphere, where both he that 
serve th and he that is served are subject unto 
a supreme sovereignty which is above all. 
That is what I understand by the reign of 
law, — not the domination of one rule alone 
upon all that is, but the reign of law over 
law, the higher above the lower, and the 
highest of all supreme ; so that those who 
rise to that last and topmost height, where 
God forever dwells and is what He com- 
mands, are sharers in his liberty and domin- 
ion : they become the sons of God, not be- 
cause they have cast off and renounced their 
obligations, but because they have recognized 
them step by step, sphere by sphere, until at 
last they come with glad submission into 
unity and harmony with that which is sove- 
reign and ultimate ; and that, if the Bible is 
true, is nothing else than perfect Love. 

See how we can trace the steps of this 
process in the common life of man! The 
child, coming into existence, not by its own 
choice and will, but out of life behind it, be- 
becomes aware first of its physical being. It 



106 H>ttai£l)t Sermons 

takes its place among the creatures that 
breathe and eat and sleep, and adapts itself 
spontaneously to the laws of that existence. 
A physical life has begun which will be con- 
tinually dependent upon obedience to those 
laws. But presently another life begins to 
dawn within the first life. The child be- 
comes conscious of powers of observation, of 
comparison, of thought. It does not cease to 
belong to the animal kingdom ; it becomes, 
however, an animal who thinks, and thus is 
subject to the higher laws of reason ; and it 
is only by following that law that the child 
is really lifted upwards, and grows intelli- 
gent and free. And then comes the opening 
of another world to which it belongs, — the 
spiritual world, — a disclosure so secret and 
vital that we cannot describe the order or 
manner of it. But we know the three chan- 
nels through which it comes, — the affections, 
the conscience, and the religious feeling. 
And we know the signs and marks of it. We 
can tell when the child begins to feel the 
ties of love and duty which bind it to human- 
kind, the laws of right and wrong which are 
different and superior to all other laws, the 
sense of awe and dependence and responsi- 



Exemption 107 



bility which is the evidence of God unseen. 
We know also that the growth of that child 
into liberty and nobility will depend upon 
the recognition of these invisible things, and 
the allegiance to them. It will rise, it will 
become a free and beautiful soul, only as it 
lives in love and duty and worship. 

Take another illustration, simpler and 
more striking. Here is a slave bound by 
artificial law to the service of a human mas- 
ter. How shall you make that man free ? 
Suppose you slay the master, and strike the 
bonds from the limbs of the slave, and say 
to him, " Go ! you are free, you have no 
master, you belong to nobody." What have 
you done for him ? Is he really any more 
free than he was before? Is he not still a 
slave, though a masterless one? But sup- 
pose you teach him to believe that he is a 
human being, and that he has a service to 
render, even in his low estate, to the whole 
brotherhood of mankind, — a service just as 
real and true, and therefore just as noble, 
as that of the king upon his throne. Sup- 
pose you bring into his mind the great truth 
that he belongs to God just as fully and as 
completely as his master does, and that, even 



108 J^tratg&t ftermmui 

under the hard conditions of his life, it is 
his duty, his privilege, his glory, to serve 
God by honesty and fidelity and diligence 
and purity. Now, indeed, you have liberated 
his soul ; and if the liberation of his body 
comes, as it ought to come, as it must come, 
it will find him already a free man, and fit 
for liberty, because he has caught sight of 
the true meaning of fraternity and equality. 
It was thus that Christianity advanced 
upon the world, and thus that it dealt with 
the evil of human slavery. Entering the 
mighty Roman Empire at a time when it in- 
cluded perhaps 120,000,000 of people and 
60,000,000 of them slaves, it proclaimed 
no insurrection, it created no anarchy. It 
taught the Fatherhood of God and the bro- 
therhood of man, not merely as a doctrine, 
but as a law of life binding all who believed 
in it. It said in plain words, by the mouth 
of Paul and all his fellow-servants of Chris- 
tianity : " Art thou called, being a slave ? 
Care not for it ; but if thou mayest be made 
free, use it rather. For he that is called in 
the Lord being a slave, is the Lord's free- 
man ; likewise also he that is called being 
free is Christ's slave." And so the Gospel 



Exemption 109 



carries written upon its very face the great 
truth that the only real deliverance from a 
lower bondage lies in the recognition of a 
higher obligation. Men are made free by 
discerning their noblest allegiance. 

III. But there is yet one more truth that 
we must take into account if we are to grasp 
the whole of the subject, and find ourselves 
in a position to understand the divine beauty 
and meaning of the text. Let me try to 
utter it briefly and clearly. 

The inward joy and power of our life, in 
every sphere, come from the discovery that 
its highest obligation rests at last upon the 
law of gratitude. In every tie that binds us 
we are made free and glad to serve, when 
we recognize that we have been " bought 
with a price." 

Do you see what I mean ? Take this 
thought of recognizing the price that has 
been paid for us, and carry it out into the 
different fields of human life, and see how it 
sheds a glory and a splendour on every rela- 
tionship, on every duty, on every sacrifice. 

Here is the family circle. You belong to 
it. It has its obligations and responsibilities 
for you. You are subject to your parents. 



110 Straight Grimms 

They have a right to control you and to de- 
mand your obedience. So far, you are sub- 
ject to a law, good and necessary, but in 
itself external and formal. Presently you 
come to feel, if you are worth anything at all, 
that this family life has cost something ; you 
catch a glimpse of the pangs of anguish, the 
hours of watching and weariness, the count- 
less and continual draughts on life and love, 
that a mother has borne for your sake. You 
think of the daily toils, the struggles with 
adverse fortune, the cares and self-denials 
through which a father has passed, that you 
might be protected and nurtured and edu- 
cated. You begin to understand that not 
only expenditures of such things as strength 
and money, but far greater treasures of the 
heart, affections, anxieties, prayers, sacrifices, 
expenditures of the very best of life, have 
been made for you. And when that truth 
comes to you, you feel that you are bought 
with a price. Does it oppress and darken 
your life ? Does it not rather ennoble and 
gladden you ? It lifts you up into the true 
filial relation, — makes you long to be a 
nobler son, a better daughter, more worthy 
of the sacrifices which have been made for 



KeUemptum 111 



you. If they could ever be repaid, they 
would be a burden until you had discharged 
the debt. But just because it is so great 
that it transcends payment, it makes you a 
willing debtor forever, and binds you to a 
grateful and loving life. 

Is not the same thing true of our relations 
to our country ? You are born a citizen of 
the republic ; and that does not mean very 
much, as a bare fact, except a duty of paying 
taxes, and a privilege, which you may not 
prize very highly, of voting with more or less 
regularity. But suppose it flashes upon you 
some day, as I believe it does flash upon 
most honest and manly boys who read the 
history of their country, that all the hard- 
ships and perils and conflicts of the fore- 
fathers — all the patient endurance of pri- 
vations and the brave defiance of dangers, 
all the offerings of treasure and blood that 
have been made to found, liberate, defend, and 
preserve our country — are a price paid for 
you. Do you not see how that thought must 
kindle the flame of patriotism upon the altar 
of your heart ? How it must awaken that 
strange, inward warmth of feeling which 
glows at the very mention of your country's 



112 Straight Sermons 

name ? How it will rise, if you are a true 
man, in the hour of need, into that devotion 
which cries, " It is sweet and beautiful to die 
for one's country " ? Surely the very soul of 
patriotism is this wonderful sense that we 
have been bought with a price. 

And the same thing is true of our relation- 
ship to humanity, to the great brotherhood 
of man. We are born into it and belong to 
it. We are subject to the common laws of 
human nature, and we submit to them with 
good or ill grace. It does not mean very 
much to us. But suppose we come to un- 
derstand that this race of man to which 
we belong, is bound together by something 
deeper and more vital than subjection to 
an outward law, that there is a vicarious 
element in human life, that no man liveth 
to himself and no man dieth to himself, that 
all the efforts and aspirations and toils and 
sufferings of humanity serve us and are for 
our sake. This is true in the plainest and 
most literal sense. The houses that shelter 
us, the clothes that cover us, the food on 
our tables, have all been won for us by the 
labour of other hands. We have paid for 
that labour, it is true, but there is one thing 



Krtempttnn 113 



that we have not paid for, and that is the 
life that has gone into the labour. 

And there is another thing that has been 
done for some of us — for all of us in this 
congregation in some measure — that we have 
not paid for and cannot repay. I mean the 
subjection of great multitudes of our fellow- 
creatures to hard and narrow and oppressive 
conditions of life, to poverty and to dull, 
distasteful toil, in order that we should be 
free to follow the callings which are, I will 
not say higher, but certainly cleaner and 
brighter and more beautiful, in order that 
we should have the means and the time for 
culture and refinement and an expanded life. 
I am not concerned now to explain or justify 
this state of things. I am taking it simply 
as a fact, and I say that the true nobility of 
our human sentiment can only come from a 
sense of the meaning of that fact. When we 
realize that every liberty, every privilege, 
every advantage, that comes to us as men and 
women has been bought with a price, — that 
the dark, subterranean lives of those who toil 
day and night in the bowels of the earth, 
the perils and hardships of those who sail to 
and fro upon the stormy seas, the benumb- 



114 Stratjj&t Sermons 

ing weariness of those who dig and ditch and 
handle dirt, the endless tending of looms and 
plying of needles and carrying of burdens, — 

" the fierce confederate storm 
Of sorrow barricadoed evermore 
Within the walls of cities," — 

all this is done and endured and suffered by 
our fellow-men, though blindly, for our bene- 
fit, and accrues to our advantage, — when we 
begin to understand this, a nobler spirit 
enters into us, the only spirit that can keep 
our wealth, our freedom, our culture from 
being a curse to us forever, and sinking us 
into the ennui of a selfish hell. 

Noblesse oblige, — that is the true motto 
of a nobility worthy of the name. The 
higher the elevation, the deeper and wider is 
the obligation. The ideal of kingship is not 
to be found in the luxurious and licentious 
palace of the Shah of Persia, but in the hos- 
pitals of Naples, where the King of Italy 
bends to help and comfort the poorest of his 
subjects. Every touch of beauty, of light, 
of power, every gift of riches, of freedom, of 
learning that is ours, has been paid for by 
the lives of our fellow-men, and binds us to 
their service. It is this thought alone which 



Kefcemptum 115 



can reveal to us the immense meaning of 
humanity, and fit us for our part in life, and 
make us truly noble men and gentle women. 
We are bought with a price. 

And now some of you may ask why I 
have dwelt so long upon these propositions 
in regard to human life and said nothing 
yet about religion, made no direct comment 
upon the text. This is the reason. It is 
because life is part of religion, and religion 
is part of life. It is because the great truth 
of redemption by Jesus Christ is not a 
strange, unnatural, unreasonable, inhuman 
truth, but profoundly natural and reason- 
able, and fitted in, by a divine adaptation, to 
the very inmost recesses of our human na- 
ture. It is because the beauty and power 
of the text come not from the fact that it is 
foreign to our experience, — a mystic and 
incomprehensible word, — but rather from 
the fact that it is cognate to our experi- 
ence. Everything fine and pure and uplift- 
ing in our life points to it and throws light 
upon it. 

Our physical, intellectual, and social hap- 
piness depends on our belonging to something 
greater than ourselves. How, then, shall 



116 Straight Sermons 

we find our spiritual happiness, save in be- 
longing to God ? Our deliverance from 
the lower servitude of life comes through 
the knowledge of its higher and wider alle- 
giance. How, then, shall we be freed from 
the slavery of sin and self and sense and 
death, save by coming into subjection to 
God ? The inspiration of the service that we 
render in this world to our homes, our coun- 
try, our fellow-men, springs from the recogni- 
tion that a price has been paid for us ; the 
vital power of noble conduct rises from the 
deep fountain of gratitude, which flows not 
with water, but with warm heart' s-blood. 
How then, shall a like power come into our 
religion, how shall it be as real, as living, 
as intimate, as our dearest human tie, unless 
we know and feel that God has paid a price 
for us, that He has bought us with his own 
precious life ? 

And this is the truth which the Gospel re- 
veals to us. This is the price of which the 
text speaks ; it is the incarnation, life, suf- 
ferings and death of the Son of God. This 
is the great ransom which has been given for 
all. He gave himself to poverty, to toil, to 
humiliation, to agony, to the cross. He 



K exemption 117 



gave himself for us, not only for our bene- 
fit, but in our place. He bore the trials and 
temptations which belong to us. He car- 
ried our sins. He endured our punishment. 
Through torture and anguish He went down 
to our death. Through loneliness and sor- 
row He descended into our grave. If it 
were merely a human being who had done 
this for us, it would be much. But since it 
was a Divine Being, it is infinitely more pre- 
cious. Think of the almighty One becoming 
weak, the glorious One suffering shame, the 
holy One dwelling amongst sinners, the very 
Son of God pouring out his blood for us 
upon the accursed tree ! It is this divinity 
in the sacrifice that gives it power to recon- 
cile and bind our hearts to God. It is God 
himself proving how much He loves us by 
the price which He is willing to pay for us. 
It is God himself manifest in the flesh to 
redeem us from sin and death, in order that 
we may belong to Him entirely and forever. 
Words fail me to express the splendour 
and might of this great truth as it is revealed 
in the Holy Scriptures. It is the wisdom of 
God and the power of God unto salvation. 
It is the supreme revelation of the Divine 



118 Straight Sermons 

nature, which is like the human nature, and 
yet so far outshines it as the sun outshines a 
taper. It tells us what God will do for us ; 
for " He that spared not his own Son, but 
freely delivered Him up for us, how shall 
He not also, with Him, freely give us all 
things? " It tells us what we owe to God : 
" for He died for all, that they which live 
should not henceforth live unto themselves, 
but unto Him which died for them and rose 
again." It is the source and centre of a 
true theology. It is the spring and motive 
of a high morality. It is the secret of a new 
life, redeemed, consecrated, sanctified by the 
Son of God, who loved us and gave himself 
for us. 

A great deal of our religious thought and 
teaching to-day is turned to the example of 
Christ as the model and pattern of true man- 
hood. And we rejoice in this, because it is 
a high and noble doctrine. But let us not 
forget that if it stands alone it is partial and 
incomplete. The force of an example, how- 
ever lofty, has its limits. The life of Christ 
as an ideal falls short of the power to save 
us and uplift us, unless it is also a ransom, 
a life freely given and sacrificed for us. If 



fie&emption 119 



He were our example only, his very eleva- 
tion above us, the purity and splendour of 
his character, the perfection of his moral 
triumph compared with our feeble and sinful 
lives, would discourage and cast us down. 
As well ask a common man to show the 
genius of a Dante or a Shakespeare, to exer- 
cise the power of a Caesar or a Charlemagne, 
as to live the life of Christianity with no- 
thing but an example to guide and bind us. 
But because that life is something more, be- 
cause it is given and sacrificed for us, it 
becomes a vital and spiritual power, it lays 
hold of us at the very centre of our being. 
While it covers our sins and shortcomings, 
it awakens our noblest longings and desires. 
It sets us free to follow it, and to follow it 
to success. 

Man will never grow beyond the need of 
that ransom. For all other ways of finding 
peace with God, of making sure that He 
loves us, of entering into the sense of for- 
giveness and fellowship with Him, are vain 
and futile compared with the Divine sacrifice. 
Peace through the cross alone, is true for us 
as it was for Paul. Man will never grow be- 
yond the power of that great ransom to test 



120 g>trats!)t Germans 

and judge his soul, to reveal the thoughts of 
his heart, to prove whether he will be saved 
or lost. For here is the solemn mystery 
of it all, that, though this price was paid for 
every man, yet every man is free to appro- 
priate or to reject the gift, to acknowledge 
or deny the obligation. And those who do 
not feel its preciousness and its binding- 
power, those who count the blood of the 
covenant wherewith they were redeemed a 
common thing, and deny the Lord that 
bought them, are beyond the reach of any 
ransom. God himself is to them as " a stran- 
ger and as a man astonished, a mighty man 
that cannot save." 

And so, my friends, I have set the truth 
before you by which the course of all your 
years, stretching far on beyond this life, must 
be determined. I point you to the Saviour, 
who alone can set you free from the curse of 
sin, from the bondage of the law, from the 
fear of death, by bringing you into his love 
and service. You are bought with a price. 
Christ has come and borne your burdens with 
you, and your sins for you. Henceforth 
there is not one of you that need be anx- 
ious about the forgiveness of your sins, the 



Exemption 121 



salvation of your souls. It is all purchased 
and paid for, if you will accept it. But 
with it YOU are purchased, and you belong 
to the Lord Christ. " He has conquered sin, 
so that you need not be its slave any longer. 
Now let Him conquer you by his great love, 
and so his victory will be complete." 

We desire our life to be a life of freedom, 
a life of noble service, a life of glad and 
happy labour for that which is highest and 
best. There is only one way to make it so. 
and that is to live it under the controlling 
power of the great price that has been paid 
for us. Acknowledge the Lord Jesus as 
your Saviour, Owner, Master, King. Con- 
fess the greatness of your obligation to Him. 
Confess that you can never repay it. And 
then give yourself to Him to live as bravely, 
as purely, as faithfully, as nobly as you can 
in his name and for his sake. 

" Were the whole realm of nature mine, 
That were a present far too small : 
Love so amazing", so divine, 

Demands my life, my soul, my all." 



VI 

ABRAHAM'S ADVENTURE 
'Sim &e toent out, not fcnotoins to&ttfcer Ije toent' 

Hebrews xi. 8. 



• 9tnU Ije Writ ant, not fcnotoms to&ttfter I)e toent/' 

This text describes a life of adventure. 
It brings before us one of that noble com- 
pany of explorers who forsake the beaten 
track and push out into a new, strange, 
uncertain course for the sake of discovering 
and possessing a new world. 

These men always appear heroic. There 
is something in them which compels our ad- 
miration. There is something in us which 
responds to their daring, and follows their 
journeyings with eager interest. I suppose 
it is the old, migratory instinct, — the in- 
stinct which first drew the tribes of men 
out from their original homes, and peopled 
the distant regions of the earth, — it is this 
deep, curious impulse of wandering and dis- 
covery which still lingers in our nature, and 
stirs us with strange thrills of enthusiasm, 
and fills us with wild day-dreams of adven- 
ture as we read or hear the story of some 



126 Sttais&t Sermon* 

famous traveller in unknown lands. There 
is an explorer latent in almost every man 
whose mind is large enough to have any 
interests outside of himself ; and it is this 
unused and frustrated explorer who sits be- 
side the fire and pores, entranced and fasci- 
nated, over the Arctic diaries of Dr. Kane 
or the African journals of Stanley. He rec- 
ognizes and applauds the heroism of these 
men, who went out, not knowing whither they 
went. 

The power which has moved adventurers 
is faith. This is the vital force of almost 
all the great explorers. They have not 
gone forth vaguely and aimlessly to wan- 
der to and fro upon the face of the earth. 
They have believed in something unseen, 
something that other men have not believed 
in, something that has seemed to the world 
impossible and absurd, and they have set 
forth to seek it. A new continent across the 
ocean, a new passage from sea to sea, a new 
lake among the forests, a new land to be 
possessed and cultivated, a goal beyond 
sight and beyond knowledge, apprehended 
and realized by a heroic faith, has drawn 
them over stormy seas and inhospitable des- 



&6ra|)am'a SUtoentttre 127 

erts, through rugged mountains and track- 
less jungles. They have believed, and there- 
fore adventured. 

Nor has their faith been lacking, for the 
most part, in a spiritual element. There is 
hardly one of them — not one, I think, 
among the very greatest of the world's ex- 
plorers — who has not believed in God, and 
in his overruling Providence, and in his 
call to them to undertake their adventures. 
It is wonderful and beautiful to see how 
this religious element has entered into the 
exploration of the earth, and how faith has 
asserted itself in the most famous and glori- 
ous journeyings of men. We see Columbus 
planting the standard of the cross on the 
lonely beach of San Salvador : and Balboa 
kneeling silent, with uplifted hands, on the 
cliff from which he first caught sight of the 
Pacific ; and Livingstone praying in his tent 
in the heart of Africa. From all the best 
and the bravest adventurers we hear the con- 
fession that they are the servants of a Divine 
Being, summoned and sent hj Him to a work 
for which they would give Him the glory. 

Now the life of Abraham takes an honour- 
able place in the history of adventure for 



128 Straight Sermon* 

several reasons. It seems to me that its 
antiquity and originality entitle it to respect. 
But apart from this, in itself Abraham's 
adventure was momentous and significant. 
Other enterprises may appear to us more 
important and eventful than his ; but, after 
all, it may be doubted whether any expedi- 
tion that man has ever undertaken has had 
larger results in the history of the world 
than the emergence of the father of the 
Hebrew race from Mesopotamian bondage. 
Other journeys may seem to us more strik- 
ing and wonderful than his pilgrimage from 
Ur of the Chaldees to the land of Caanan ; 
but if we knew the story of its hardships 
and perils, if we understood the complex 
civilization which he forsook and the barbar- 
ism which he faced, we might not think it 
unworthy to be compared with the most 
famous travels. But the one thing in this 
ancient story which has survived the oblivion 
of the centuries, the one thing which shines 
out in it clear and distinct, and makes it 
glorious and precious beyond comparison, is 
its imperishable and unalterable testimony 
to the power of faith to make a brave man 
face the unknown. 



abra&am'* autoentttre 129 

Abraham believed. He lived in an idola- 
trous country. Every one about him, even 
his own father and his family, worshipped 
idols. But Abraham's soul pierced through 
all these falsehoods and delusions of men to 
find and clasp the one living and true God 
who is a Spirit. 

Abraham believed. He was surrounded 
by the unrighteousness that a corrupt reli- 
gion always sanctions and intensifies. The 
pollutions and cruelties of heathen life 
touched him on every side, and must have 
left their stain upon him. He himself was 
far from righteous. There were flaws in 
his character, blots upon his conduct. But 
one thing he did not do. He did not carve 
an idol out of his own sin and call it a God. 
He believed in a God who was not lower 
but higher than himself, — a God of pu- 
rity, of holiness, of truth, of mercy; and 
that faith, having in itself the power to up- 
lift and purify, was counted to him for 
righteousness, — yea, it was better than any 
outward conformity to a code of morality, 
just as religion is better than ethics, because 
it has the promise of growth and enlarge- 
ment and an endless life. 



130 Straight Serumim 

Abraham believed. He was bound by 
the ties of the world, of habit, of social or- 
der, of self -interest, — by all those delicate 
and innumerable threads which seem to 
fasten a man to the ground, as the Lillipu- 
tians fastened Gulliver, and make liberty of 
thought, of belief, of conduct impossible. 
But in the midst of his bondage Abraham 
heard the voice of the God who had a 
message, a mission, a call for his soul, — 
a message which meant spiritual freedom, 
a mission which coidd only be fulfilled by 
obedience, a call which said, " Get thee out 
of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
from thy father's house, unto the land that I 
will show thee." Think what that involved, 
— separation from the past, resignation of all 
his customs and plans of life, the entrance 
upon an untrodden path, the following of an 
unseen and absolute guidance, the consecra- 
tion of his life to a journey through strange 
lands, among strange people, towards a 
strange goal, — the final and supreme adven- 
ture of his soul. But Abraham obeyed the 
call. " He went out, not knowing whither 
he went." And that was faith. 

Let us think for a little while of this as- 



Slbra&am'a &Utantute 131 

pect of faith. It is an adventure. It is a 
going out into the unknown future under the 
guidance of God. 

I. All faith recognizes that life is a pil- 
grimage whose course and duration cannot 
be foreseen. That is true, indeed, whether 
we acknowledge it or not. Even if a man 
should fancy that his existence was secure, 
and that he could direct his own career and 
predict his own future, experience would 
teach him his mistake. But the point is 
that faith recognizes this uncertainty of life 
at the outset, and in a peculiar way, which 
transforms it from a curse into a blessing: 
and makes it possible for us even to be glad 
that we must " go out not knowing whither 
we go." 

For what is it that faith does with these 
lives of ours ? It just takes them up out of 
our weak, trembling, uncertain control and 
puts them into the hands of God. It makes 
them a part of his great plan. It binds 
them fast to his pure and loving will, and 
fills them with his life. Unless we believe 
that God has made us and made us for him- 
self, unless we believe that He has some- 
thing for each one of us to do and to be, 



132 Stratj&t §>enrtDtia 

unless we believe that He knows what our 
life's way should be and has marked it out 
for us, how is it possible for us to go for- 
ward with cheerful confidence ? But if we 
do believe this, then of course we shall be 
willing to accept our own ignorance of the 
future, and, so far from hindering us in our 
advance, it will encourage and strengthen 
us to remember that the meaning of our 
life is so large that we cannot understand it. 
It will not fit into our broken and imperfect 
knowledge just because it does fit perfectly 
into the great wisdom of God. 

Do you see what I mean? The man 
who has no faith either accepts the uncer- 
tainty of life as a necessity of fate ; he is 
caught in the net of a hidden destiny, 
which to him can never seem anything else 
than a blind chance, because there is no 
purpose and no law in it, — or else he fights 
against the uncertainty of life, and tries to 
conquer it by his own skill and prudence 
and pertinacity. He chooses the object of 
his ambition, and the line of conduct which 
shall lead him to it ; he marks out a career 
for himself, and pushes forward to fulfil it 
according to his own plan. And then every 



abra&am'a &ifocntttre 133 

event that crosses his plan is a cause of 
anxiety and irritation ; every call of duty 
that lies outside of it is an interruption and 
, a burden ; every change that comes to him 
is a disappointment and a defeat ; every de- 
lay in the accomplishment of his schemes 
frets him to the heart ; and when disaster 
and sickness and death come near to him he 
trembles, for he knows that they may easily 
wreck and destroy his life. He means to 
be a self-made man ; he will supply the ma- 
terial and construct the model : he assures 
himself that he knows what the result will 
be. But all the time he is working among 
forces which may shatter him and his plan 
in a moment. Even while he dreams of suc- 
cess he stands face to face with failure. It 
seems to me that must make life a feverish 
and fitful thing; a long, weary, continual 
anxiety of heart. 

But the man who has faith accepts the 
uncertainty of life as the consequence of its 
larger significance ; he cannot interpret it, 
because it means so much ; he cannot trace 
its lines through to the end, because it has 
no end, it runs on into God's eternity. 
Something better is coming into it than 



134 Straight Sermons 

worldly success. Something better is com- 
ing out of it than wealth or fame or power. 
He is not making himself. God is making 
him, and that after a model which eye hath 
not seen, but which is to be manifest in the 
consummation of the sons of God. So he 
can toil away at his work, not knowing 
whether he is to see its result now or not, 
but knowing that God will not let it be 
wasted. So he can run with patience the 
race that is set before him, not knowing 
whether he shall come in first or last among 
his fellows, but knowing that his prize is 
secure. So he can labour at the edifice of 
his life, not knowing whether it is to be 
finished according to his plans or not, but 
knowing that it surely will be completed, 
and surely will find its place in the great 
temple which God is building. Thus his 
uncertainty becomes the ground of his cer- 
tainty. Failure, disaster, ruin are impossi- 
ble for him. Change may come to him as 
it comes to other men, but it does not mean 
calamity. Disappointment he may have to 
meet as other men meet it, but it cannot 
bring despair. Death will surely find him, 
and he cannot tell when it will come ; but 



&fcraj)am , a SUtoenture 135 

lie knows that it will not come before the 
time ; it will not break his life off in the 
middle, but will finish one part of it and 
begin another. Loss, final and irretrievable 
loss, — no, the man who believes never can 
be lost, because he willingly goes forth not 
knowing whither he goes, with God for his 
leader and guide. 

II. This, then, is the broadest meaning of 
faith's adventure : it is the surrender of 
life to a hidden guidance. And bound up 
together with this, as an essential part of it, 
we find the necessity that faith should ac- 
cept the religious life as an adventure full of 
unknown trials and tests and temptations. 
No one can tell beforehand just how many 
hardships he must pass through, just how 
many sacrifices he must make, just how 
many assaults of evil he must resist, if he 
sets out to walk with God. 

Abraham did not know what would meet 
him on his life-long journey : the day of 
peril in Egypt when he would break down 
and disgrace himself ; the day of dissension 
with Lot when he would prove his fidelity 
and his love ; the days of conflict with the 
Rephaim and the Zuzim and the Emim and 



136 Straiffjjt Sermtma 

the Horites, when lie would overthrow them ; 
the day of temptation when the king of 
Sodom would offer to make him rich ; the 
day of sharpest sorrow when he would be 
called to show his supreme devotion by re- 
signing his beloved son into the hands of the 
Lord, — all these days were hidden from him 
as he entered upon the long journey. All 
that God required of him was that he would 
meet them as they came ; not beforehand, 
in imagination, in promise and definite reso- 
lution, but at the appointed hour, in the 
crisis of trial : then, and not till then, Abra- 
ham must face his conflict, and make his 
sacrifice, and hold fast his faith. 

Not otherwise does God deal with us. 
He does not show us exactly what it will 
cost to obey Him. He asks us only to give 
what He calls for from day to day. Here 
is one sacrifice right in front of us that we 
must make now in order to serve God, — 
some evil habit to be given up, some lust of 
the flesh to be crucified and slain ; and that 
is our trial for to-day. But to-morrow that 
trial may be changed from a hardship into a 
blessing, it may become a joy and triumph to 
us ; and another trial, new, different, unf ore- 



SUjra&am'fi autoentttre 137 

seen, may meet us in the way. Now, per- 
haps, it is poverty that you have to endure, 
fighting with its temptations to envy and 
discontent, and general rebellion against the 
order of the world ; ten years hence, it may 
be wealth that will test you with its tempta- 
tions to pride, and luxury, and self-reliance, 
and general arrogance toward your fellow- 
men. Now, it may be some selfish indul- 
gence that you have to resign ; to-morrow, 
it may be some one whom you love, from 
whom you must consent to part at the call 
of God. To-day, it may be your ease, your 
comfort, your indolence that you must sacri- 
fice for the sake of doing good in the world ; 
to-morrow, it may be your activity, your 
energy, the work you delight in, that you 
must give up while sickness lays its heavy 
hand upon you, and bids you " stand and 
wait." To-day one thing, to-morrow an- 
other thing ; and God does not tell you 
what it will be : He calls you to go out into 
your adventure not knowing whither you go. 
It is this very indefiniteness of the Chris- 
tian life that frightens unbelief and allures 
faith. It is this very necessity of facing the 
unknown that divides between doubting and 



138 Straiff&t Sermon* 

believing souls. If we doubt the power and 
the love of God, if we doubt the grace 
and the truth of Christ, we will hesitate 
and hold back. We will demand to know 
all about the way before we enter upon it. 
" How much must we give up, what sacrifices 
must we make, how shall we ever be able to 
meet the trials and temptations of the fu- 
ture ? No, we cannot go out after Christ, 
because we do not know where He will lead 
us and how hard it may be to follow." 

But if we believe that this God is our 
God, and will be our guide even unto death, 
if we believe that this Christ is our only 
Saviour and Master, our Divine Leader and 
Guide, then we can go after Him the more 
gladly just because He does not tell us all 
at once what we must resign and suffer and 
resist for his sake. That, indeed, might 
crush and dishearten us; for if we knew 
all at once, we could not help trying our 
strength against it all. But since we know 
only to-day's temptation, to-day's trial, to- 
day's conflict, to-day's cross, to-day; since 
we know that He who ordered it is with us 
and will help us to bear it, — we can follow 
Him in confidence. 



abra&atn'a attoentttte 139 



" We know not what the path may be 

As yet by us untrod ; 
But we can trust our all to thee, 
Our Father and our God. 

" If called like Abram's child to climb 
The hill of sacrifice, 
Some angel may be there in time, 
Deliverance may arise. 

" Or if some darker lot be good, 
Oh teach us to endure 
The sorrow, pain, or solitude, 
That makes the spirit pure." 

III. Once more, the adventure of faith 
involves the going out to meet unknown du- 
ties and to perform hidden tasks. 

In one sense the scheme and outline of a 
religious life are clear and distinct before- 
hand ; the principles of faith and hope and 
love by which it is to be guided, the laws 
of righteousness and truth and mercy by 
which it is to be governed, are fixed and 
unchangeable, the same always and for all 
men. But in another sense the religious 
life has no scheme and outline at all. Its 
responsibilities, its opportunities, its labours 
arise from day to day. One man has one 
thing to do ; another man has another 
thing to do. The duty of the present may 



140 Sttaiff&t Sermons 

be changed, enlarged, transformed in the 
future. 

See how this is brought out in the life of 
Abraham. At first he has only to bear wit- 
ness to the true God among an idolatrous 
people ; and then he has to set out on a per- 
ilous journey towards Canaan ; and then he 
has to take care of his flocks and herds in 
the wilderness ; and then he has to deliver 
his kinsman Lot from the sword of the 
tyrant Chedorlaomer ; and then he has to 
exercise hospitality towards the angels of 
God. Abraham's duty is not written down 
and delivered to him at the beginning. It 
is kept secret from him, and he goes out to 
meet it, not knowing what it will be. 

That is the law of the life of faith. The 
man who takes a principle into his heart 
commits himself to an uncertainty, he enters 
upon an adventure. He must be ready for 
unexpected calls and new responsibilities. 

The Samaritan who rode down from Jeru- 
salem to Jericho had nothing to do in the 
morning but follow that highway, and take 
care that his beast did not stumble or hurt 
itself, or get tired out so that it could not 
finish the journey. He was just a solitary 



abta&am'a Stttoentttte 141 

horseman, and all that he needed to do was 
to have a good seat in the saddle and a light 
hand on the bit. But at noon, when he 
came to the place where that unknown pil- 
grim lay senseless and bleeding beside the 
road, — then, in a moment, the Samaritan's 
duty changed, and God called him to be a 
rescuer, a nurse, a helper of the wounded. 

Peter, when he rested on the housetop in 
Joppa, was only a pastor of the Jewish 
Christian church ; his mission was to instruct 
and guide his kinsmen according to the flesh. 
But when the great vision of a catholic 
church flashed upon him, when the knocking 
of the messengers of the Roman centurion 
sounded up from the gate of the courtyard, 
then, in a moment, Peter's duty was changed, 
and he was called to go to the house of a 
Gentile and proclaim the gospel of Christ 
without respect of persons. Read the lives 
of the heroes of faith, and you will find that 
they are all like this. They set out to per- 
form, not one task only, but anything that 
God may command. They accept Christ's 
commission, and set sail upon an unknown 
ocean with sealed orders. 

That takes courage. It is a risk, a ven- 



142 Straifffjt Sermon* 

ture. But for the spiritual as truly as for 
the temporal life the rule is, " Nothing ven- 
ture, nothing win." And is it not infi- 
nitely nobler and more inspiring to enter 
upon a career like that, — a career which 
is to run so close to God that He can speak 
into it and fill it with new meanings, new 
possibilities, new tasks, at any moment, — is 
not that infinitely finer and more glorious 
than to make a contract to do a certain 
thing for a certain price, as if God were a 
manufacturer and we were his mill-hands ? 
It seems to me that this is the very proof 
and bond of friendship with Him, this call- 
ing of faith to an unlimited and undefined 
obedience. If we will accept it, it will send 
us forward on a life that grows and expands 
and unfolds itself, and wins new powers and 
capacities, as it girds itself to meet the new 
duties that lie hidden in the future. It will 
not be a dull and dry routine : it will be an 
enterprise, a voyage of discovery, an explo- 
ration of the divine possibilities of living. 
And the joy of it, the enthusiasm and inspi- 
ration of it, will not be the tame thought that 
nothing more can be required of us than 
what we already see, but the strong assur- 



&bral)am'0 autoentttre 143 

ance that power will be given to us for every 
task that our Master sets. " Follow me," 
He cried, " and I will make you fishers of 
men." How and when and where they 
should labour the disciples knew not. They 
knew only that He would fit them for their 
duty when it met them. Even so He speaks 
to us. And even so we must follow Him 
into the unknown future, answering his call 
in the noble words of St. Augustine : " Lord, 
give what thou commandest, and command 
what thou wilt." 

IV. Only one word remains to be added. 
Faith is an adventure ; it is the courage of 
the soul to face the unknown. But that 
courage springs from the hope and confi- 
dence of the soul that its adventure will 
succeed. Beyond the unknown, beyond the 
uncertainties and perils and responsibilities 
of the earthly future, it sees the certain, the 
secure, the imperishable, — " an inheritance 
incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth 
not away, reserved in heaven for you, who 
are kept by the power of God through faith 
unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the 
last time." 

How grandly that certainty of faith comes 



144 ^>ttatg!)t ftermoiu; 

out in the story of Abraham! A pilgrim 
and a stranger, a man without a country, 
wandering up and down between the lands 
of Egypt and Chaldea, involved in strange 
conflicts and unexpected trials, his white 
tent shining in the sunlight and shaking in 
the wind, as it rested here and there among 
the highland pastures and on the steep hills 
of Caanan, for a hundred years, a sojourner 
in the land of promise as in a land not his 
own, — yet that noble old father of the 
faithful, that loyal friend and follower of 
God, was never an aimless man, never an 
uncertain man, never a hopeless man. He 
went forth not knowing whither he went, 
but he also looked for " a city that hath 
foundations, whose builder and maker is 
God." 

Sublime assurance, glorious pilgrimage! 
And is not that the type and symbol of the 
life of faith ? Of the nearer future, the 
future that lies among the mountains and 
valleys, the pastures and deserts of this 
world, it is ignorant, and yet it does not 
fear to face it ; for it sees that the final 
future, the blessed rest and reward of the 
soul that serves and follows its Divine Mas- 



&ira|)am , fii StUtantttre 145 

ter, is secure. It knows whither Christ has 
gone, and it knows the hidden way. And 
along that way it presses steadily to its goal 
of everlasting peace. 

" On through waste and blackness, 

O'er our desert road ; 
On till Sinai greet us, 

Mountain of our God ! 
On past Edom's valley, 

Moab's mountain wall, 
Jordan's seaboard rushings, 

The pillar cloud o'er all ! 
Past the palmy city, 

Rock and hill our road, 
On till Salem greet us, 

City of our God ! " 



VII 

SOLOMON'S CHOICE 

'(Stoe me noto toisftom anfl ttnotoletoffe, tljat 3f map 
go ottt an* come in before tins people : for tojjo 
can itttiffe tjris tjjp people tjjat is so great ? " 

2 Chronicles i. 10. 



These words were spoken by Solomon, 
the greatest, wisest, and in some respects the 
meanest of the Hebrew kings. His life is 
one of the standing riddles of history. Never 
man began so fairly and ended so darkly. 
The blossoms of his youth were like the flow- 
ers on the tree of life : the fruits of his old 
age were like Dead Sea apples, full of dust. 
In him genius was wedded to sin, and success 
was the mother of failure. Bright as was 
the promise of his early years, glorious as 
were the achievements of his manhood, the 
clouds that gathered round his death were so 
heavy and dark that men have remained in 
doubt whether his final place is among the 
saved or among the lost. The fathers of the 
church held opposite opinions on the sub- 
ject ; and in Pietro Lorenzetti's great fresco 
of the resurrection, in the Campo Santo at 
Pisa, the uncertainty of Solomon's fate is 



150 Straight Sermons 

represented by the painter, who has placed 
him in the middle of the picture, looking 
doubtfully around, not knowing whether he 
is to be called to the right hand or to the 
left. Perhaps, after all, the painter was 
prudent, for the question of final destiny is 
one which we can never solve in regard to 
any human being. Wise and simple, beggar 
and king, as they pass from our sight, we 
must leave them to the justice and mercy of 
the omniscient God. 

But the questions of character and con- 
duct as they arise here in this world are 
within the reach of our understanding, and 
it is to a study of some of these questions as 
they are suggested by the life of Solomon 
that I invite your attention now. The his- 
tory of his life is illustrated in three great 
visions which came to him at three successive 
periods of his strange career. Three times 
God visited him in the night watches : three 
times the curtain which hides the future 
was lifted, and the darkness of his sleep was 
illumined with the secret flash of truth. 

The first vision came at the beginning of 
his career, when the untried course of life 
was just opening before him. It contained 



bolomcm'6 C&oice 151 



a glorious promise and a solemn warning. 
It revealed the elements of strength and the 
elements of weakness in one of the most 
marvellous characters the world has ever 
seen. The Lord appeared to him in Gibeon 
and said, " Ask what I shall give thee." Solo- 
mon's answer was in the words of the text. 

The second vision came to him at the very 
climax of his splendour and power, when the 
great temple, which was the central spot of 
glory in his land and in his reign, was com- 
pleted and dedicated. When the echoes of 
rejoicing had died away in the royal city, and 
the people were returning with gladness to 
their tents, then the Lord appeared to Solo- 
mon the second time, as He had appeared 
unto him at Gibeon. The awful voice, 
sounding in the silence of the king's heart, 
declared that the prayer of dedication had 
been heard. The temple was accepted and 
blessed. God would make his dwelling there 
perpetually. " But if ye shall at all turn 
from following me, ye or your children, and 
will not keep my commandments and my 
statutes which I have set before you, but go 
and serve other gods, and worship them ; 
then will I cut off Israel out of the land 



152 Straijjjt Sermona 

which I have given them ; and this house, 
which I have hallowed for my name, will I 
cast out of my sight ; and Israel shall be a 
proverb and a byword among all nations." 

The third vision came to the king in the 
decline and shame of his old age, when the 
evils against which he had been warned had 
come upon him, when his heart had been 
entangled with strange women and stranger 
gods, when the misused wealth and perverted 
power which had been his were turning to 
dross and corruption within his hands. Then 
God was angry with him, and appeared to 
him once more and said : " Forasmuch as 
this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept 
my covenant and my statutes which I have 
commanded thee, I will surely rend the king- 
dom from thee, and will give it to thy ser- 
vant. Notwithstanding in thy days I will 
not do it, for David thy father's sake : but 
I will rend it out of the hand of thy son." 
A dreadful dream, stern, angry, terrible : 
the only gleam of mercy in it was shown, not 
for Solomon's sake, but for the sake of his 
dead father, who was dear to God ; a vision 
of dishonour and darkness and swift-coming 
disaster closing with black wings about the 



bolomon'fi Choice 153 



declining days of him who had once been 
the brightest and most prosperous and best 
beloved of Israel's monarchs. What is the 
meaning of it ? How shall we explain it ? 
How shall we read and understand its lesson ? 
How is it possible that a dream so bright 
and fair as that which crowned his youth 
should turn into a dream so black and shame- 
ful as that which shadowed his old age ? 

It is to solve this mystery that I ask you 
to turn back again to the opening vision of 
Solomon's life. Scrutinize it more closely, 
study it more deeply. See if you cannot 
discern in it the fatal flaw which marred 
the character of the royal philosopher, and 
through which at last his life was brought 
to ruin. 

The circumstances of Solomon at the time 
of this first and most famous dream are wor- 
thy of our caref id attention. He was, as you 
know, the youngest son of King David, who 
by his strong and heroic qualities, under the 
blessing of God, had brought the kingdom 
to a state of prosperity and power. The 
sovereignty of Israel at the close of David's 
long and warlike reign was something vastly 
richer and grander and more potent than it 



154 S>traifff)t Sermons 

was when the big, blundering Saul was chosen 
king ; and the sceptre which David held in 
his weary and trembling hand was the sym- 
bol of a wide and successful dominion over 
a turbulent but mighty people. To whom 
should he leave it? His two oldest sons, 
Absalom and Ammon, had proved unworthy, 
and were dead. The old king's heart turned 
now to his last-born child, the darling of 
his declining years, and to him he gave the 
kingdom, calling him Solomon, " the peace- 
ful one," and centring all the hope and love 
of his heart upon the happiness and pros- 
perity of this chosen son. 

How strange it is, and yet how common, 
for the father to desire a character and des- 
tiny for his son different from his own ! The 
man of war desires his heir to be a man 
of peace. And how strange also, and yet 
how nearly inevitable, that the father's sins 
should entwine themselves with the life of 
the child that he loves best ! 

The mother of Solomon was Bathsheba, a 
woman of great beauty, but of whose moral 
character the less said the better, for she was 
certainly the occasion, and I cannot help 
feeling that she was at least passively the 



Solomon's Cfjotce 155 

cause, of her husband's death and her mon- 
arch's crime ; and she was the only one who 
profited by the whole shameful history, for 
it raised her not unwillingly from the wife of 
a common man to the wife of a king. " Now 
in Eastern lands and under a system of poly- 
gamy," says a wise observer, " the son is more 
dependent even than elsewhere upon the char- 
acter of the mother." And I believe that 
Solomon's whole life felt the influence of 
such a mother. Ambitious but comfort-lov- 
ing, passionate but cold, inwardly sensual but 
outwardly devout, fascinating but intensely 
selfish, she was one of those whom Goethe 
called " problematic characters," who attain 
the greatest external success, but are forever 
unhappy and unsatisfied because they never 
lose or forget themselves. And from her, 
by birth and education, Solomon received 
the qualities which were brought out in his 
after-life. 

He was admirably fitted to rule, trained 
in all the requirements of royalty, inspired 
with a sense of the dignity and responsibility 
of his position, every inch a king ; but he 
was never taught to escape from his great- 
est foe and final destroyer, himself ; and thus 



156 Straight Sermon* 

his noblest actions and his greatest successes 
were turned into failures. 

But we are running before our history. 
Let us turn back to regard Solomon, the 
young king, not yet twenty years of age, 
seated on the throne of his father, the in- 
heritor of a dominion among the most splen- 
did of the Eastern world. He desires to 
inaugurate his reign with an act of religious 
worship, for this is eminently proper, and in 
no other way will his royal magnificence be 
seen to better advantage. God has forbid- 
den the people to offer sacrifice in the high 
places on the mountain-tops, but custom has 
sanctioned the violation of this command, 
and Solomon cares more for the popular 
usage and for a grand display than for 
a forgotten and obsolete law. He goes with 
a solemn procession to the top of Mt. Gibeon, 
where stands the great brazen altar of Beza- 
leel, and there he offers a thousand burnt- 
offerings, filling the whole heavens with the 
smoke of his kingly sacrifices and the noise 
of his royal worship. 

The smoke rolls away. The last echoes 
of the solemn music die among the hills. 
Solomon is asleep in his tent on the moun- 



Solomon's Cfjoice 157 

tain. And now comes that wondrous dream 
which foreshadows the course of his whole 
life. God appears to him, and asks him to 
choose that which he desires more than all 
things else. Solomon chooses " wisdom and 
knowledge to go out and come in before 
the people." God approves the choice and 
promises to add wealth and honour. Solo- 
mon awakes and the dream is true ; but, for 
all that, he dies in sin and sorrow and dishon- 
our. How shall we explain the mystery ? 

Three questions, it seems to me, will go to 
the root of the matter : — 

Why did God approve of Solomon's choice, 
and yet not approve of him ? 

Why was Solomon the wisest of men, and 
yet one of the greatest of fools ? 

Why did Solomon have all that he de- 
sired, and yet remain forever unsatisfied ? 

I. God approved of Solomon's choice be- 
cause it was relatively right. As between 
wealth and fame and wisdom, the young king 
instantly and instinctively seized the greatest 
and noblest of the three. Wisdom is more 
than riches or fame, because it is the fountain 
of both. An understanding heart, the ability 
to discriminate between the good and the 



158 J?tratq;f)t Sermons 

bad among rnen and causes and enterprises. 
is certainly the most valuable possession for 
every man. especially for one who is called 
to rule over his fellows. For without this. 
the richest and most powerful potentate will 
come : aght. How strange that men. 

even from the standpoint of this world, do 
not understand this ! They crave wealth. 
not thinking that wealth in the hands of a 
fool only makes him a prey to knaves. They 
aspire : ~er. not remembering that power 

in the hands of one who is not wise enough 
for it only makes him a laughing-stock. How 
many a v.- .- ::her. who might I:: 

re-;" 7 :-te ' rarity, has : - : r :::■_: 

by the sudden gift of riches or orriee ! T\ is- 
dom is the principal thing, for if a man has 
that he can acquire and use ' rers. And 

Solomon's magnificence, the prosperity of his 
kingdom, and the fame of his reign all came 
from his gift of wisdom, so wisely chosen. 

But although this choice was re 
right, it was not absolutely the best. There 
was something better for which he might 
have asked, and which, i: a ■'-:. - 

would have b:v — the blessing of 

God not only upon his reign, but upon his 
own soul forever. 



Salomon'* C&oice 159 

What was the burden of David's prayers 
before God ? What was the deep and burn- 
ing desire of David's heart, not only in his 
youth, but also in his old age, growing and 
deepening as it was answered and fed by 
God ? It was the longing for holiness, the 
consuming hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness, which is the noblest pain and the richest 
want of the soul. Blessed are they who feel 
it, for they shall be filled. " Create in me a 
clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
within me." This was David's prayer, the 
highest and the best : not first an understand- 
ing heart, but first a clean heart, cleansed by 
the Divine pardon from the stains of guilt, and 
freed by the Divine power from the defile- 
ment of sin. He felt the burden of iniquity, 
the shame and sorrow of uncleanness, the 
slavery of self, and he cried to be delivered. 
If God would grant him this, it would be 
more to him than all beside. " Purge me 
with hyssop and I shall be clean ; wash me 
and I shall be whiter than snow." 

This is the noblest choice. Wisdom is 
good, but holiness is as far above wisdom 
as Christ is above Socrates. If Solomon 
had only been wise enough to choose this, 



160 Strait Sermon* 

if he had only felt his greatest weakness and 
his deepest need, and asked for a pure and 
holy heart, how rich beyond expression would 
have been the results of that vision, — rich 
not only for this world, but for that which 
is to come : rich in the approval of the liv- 
ing God; rich in the salvation of his im- 
mortal soul; rich in an entrance into that 
heavenly kingdom which shall endure when 
all the thrones and crowns and sceptres of 
this world have crumbled into dust ! 

Let us remember that while these earthly 
kingdoms are founded upon wealth and 
power and wisdom, God's kingdom is 
founded on holiness of character. And 
though we may achieve greatness in these 
lower realms, though we may become mer- 
chant princes, or political rulers, or kings 
of thought, the least in the kingdom of 
heaven, yes, the simplest, poorest child who 
has known God's love and felt his purifying 
Spirit in the heart, will be greater than we 
are, so long as our sole inheritance is in the 
kingdoms of this world. 

II. Why was Solomon the wisest of men, 
and yet one of the greatest of fools ? In 
order to answer this question we must scruti- 



ftolomon'tf Choice 161 

nize his choice very closely. And if we do 
this we shall see that the wisdom for which 
he asked was peculiar and limited. It was 
political wisdom, such as befits a king and 
renders him able to rule successfully over the 
minds of men. He felt that the difficulties 
of governing his tumultuous and rebellious 
people would be almost insuperable unless he 
had a more than human insight into charac- 
ter, and tact in controlling men. And so he 
asked for wisdom and knowledge to go out 
and come in before the people. 

Now, as a king, this was what he most 
needed. But Solomon was a man before 
he was a king. And, as a man, what he 
most needed was an understanding heart to 
guide his own life. Perhaps he thought he 
was wise enough for this already. Perhaps 
he thought he was able to rule his inner 
kingdom for himself, if God would only help 
him with the outer. And herein lay his 
folly, for a man can more easily control and 
guide the destinies of a great nation than he 
can bind and direct the passions of his own 
disordered and tumultuatin^ heart. 

It is easier to take a city than to rule your 
own spirit. History proves it in the lives of 



162 Straight Sernuma 

hundreds of great men who have been able 
to control the forces of politics, but not to 
guide their own lives, not to resist their own 
besetting sins of avarice or lust/ It would 
be strange if we could not read this lesson 
in our own times in the dark, sad story of 
Eudolph, the crown-prince of Austria. Heir 
to one of the proudest thrones of Europe, bril- 
liant in his natural gifts, and developed by 
education into a man of many accomplish- 
ments, skilled in art and letters, and quali- 
fied to adorn his lofty station with extraor- 
dinary success, he was driven by his own hot 
and untamed passions, in the prime of his 
young manhood, to a dishonourable death 
and a suicide's grave. 

Solomon's fatal weakness was for wives. 
I do not suppose that we are to understand 
that he was a gross sensualist. He probably 
sought mental excitement and change in the 
organization of his great household. One 
of his chief objects was to increase his politi- 
cal influence by contracting alliances with 
the princesses of surrounding nations. He 
thought he could manage the women, but he 
was foolish, for of course the women man- 
aged him. And still he went on adding to 



SwUmum'a C&oice 163 

his burdens and entanglements, every month 
bringing a new princess into the royal house- 
hold, and every princess bringing a new god, 
until at length he had seven hundred wives 
and three hundred concubines, and I think 
we must agree that the last state of that 
man was worse than the first. Hated by 
his people for the heavy burdens of taxation 
which he was forced to lay upon them for 
the support of his costly household, turned 
hither and thither by wives who neither un- 
derstood his wisdom nor cared for his great- 
ness but only for his gold, worshipping at 
the shrines of a hundred gods in none of 
whom he believed, — what an old age is 
this ! It is the very mockery of greatness, 
the supreme irony of fate, that the hoary 
head of the wisest of monarchs should be 
crowned by his own hands with the cap of 
the fool. And all this because he did not 
understand that to guide one's own life is a 
harder and more perilous task than to rule a 
kingdom, because he did not learn to pray 
with David, " Teach me thy way, O Lord, 
and lead me in a plain path ; send out thy 
light and thy truth, let them lead me." 
III. Let us ask, now, the third and last 



164 Straight Serouma 

question. Why did Solomon have all that 
he desired, and yet remain unhappy ? The 
answer is simple and straightforward : be- 
cause he never forgot or lost himself. He 
tried to be happy. That was the chief end 
and aim of his life, his own success, his own 
felicity. He did not seek it in a low and 
sensual way ; not in coarse pleasures nor in 
trifling pursuits. Solomon was far too wise 
for that. But in a high and grand and royal 
way he sought for happiness. The delight of 
knowing and understanding all things, the joy 
of feeling that in him more wisdom was cen- 
tred than in all men before or after, the pride 
of the most splendid temple and the most 
prosperous kingdom and the most beneficent 
reign, — thus he sought his happiness and 
thus he never found it ; for it is a law of 
God that they who will be happy never shall 
be ; never shall clasp the phantom after 
which they run so eagerly, never shall feel 
the deep sweet calm of a contented soul, 
never shall rest in perfect peace, until they 
cease their mad chase, forget and deny them- 
selves, and are lost and absorbed in some 
noble and unselfish pursuit. Then, and then 
only, happiness comes, as the angels came to 



Solomon's; Choice 165 

Jesus in the desert, and in Gethsemane, 
when He had renounced all hope of joy. 

" He that loseth his life shall find it." 
The words of the Master, who was wiser 
than Solomon, are true now as then. We 
cannot have happiness until we forget to 
seek for it. We cannot find peace until we 
enter the path of self-sacrificing usefulness. 
We cannot be delivered from this "vain 
expense of passions that forever ebb and 
flow," this wretched, torturing, unsatisfied, 
unsatisfying self, until we come to Jesus and 
give our lives to Him to be absorbed as his 
life was in loving obedience to God and lov- 
ing service to our fellow-men. 

Let us draw this lesson from Solomon's 
dream. If God says to us, in the bright 
promise of youth, " Ask what I shall give 
thee," let us make the best choice, and an- 
swer, " Give me grace to know thy Son, the 
Christ, and to grow like Him ; for that is 
the true wisdom which leads to eternal life, 
and that is the true royalty which brings 
dominion over self, and that is the true hap- 
piness which flows unsought from fellowship 
with the Divine Life." 



VIII 

PETER'S MISTAKE 

' &nfc |)eter anstoerefc an& sai& to %zzu&, ^Raster, 
it is pott for ttd to fie &ere : anU let tts make 
tforee tafiernaclea; one for tljee, anU one for 
ittoses, anU one for ©Itasu Jor jje totst not 
to&at to sap/' 

2 Chronicles i. 10. 



" an* JJeter anatoerefc an* aattt to JJestta, iltasu 
ter, it is gooU for us to 6e fcere : anU let w 
mafee tjjree taiernaelea : one for tt)tz, anU one 
for fflitists, an* one for ©lias/' 

All of the apostles of our Lord Jesus 
Christ made mistakes, for they were all 
human. But the Apostle Peter seems to 
have been almost more human than the 
others, and so more liable to error. There 
is no possibility of taking him for a mythical 
character, a demigod, or a legendary hero. 
He is too much like ourselves. A vessel 
filled to the brim with water is apt to spill a 
little when it is shaken. Peter is so full 
of human nature that, whenever he is ex- 
cited or agitated, it seems to overflow, and 
some word or deed comes out, which would 
be almost childish in its impulsiveness, if it 
were not for the virile force of the great 
strong heart behind it. The consequence of 
this is, that he is more often in trouble, more 



170 Jsttaig&t ^ermjms 

frequently rebuked and corrected, than any 
other of the disciples. 

And yet we love the Apostle Peter. We 
cannot help it. He was a man, take him 
for all in all. The very impetuosity which 
so often led him into a false position was 
a quality which, under proper discipline and 
restraint, fitted him to become the chief of 
the apostles, and the leader of the aggres- 
sive work of the church. I would rather 
have a man who sometimes caught fire at the 
wrong time, than one so damp and flabby 
that you could never get a spark of enthusi- 
asm out of him. A clock which sometimes 
goes too fast is better than one which never 
goes at all. And there was one thing of 
which you could be always sure with Peter, 
— he never would profess to love you while 
at heart he was indifferent or hostile to you. 
He never would put his arm over your 
shoulder and call you ; * dear brother " while 
he was secretly endeavouring to get hold of 
your money, or circulating vague reports to 
discredit your reputation or undermine your 
influence. You could rely on seeing the 
worst and the best of Peter at once. He 
had not much tact, but his stock of can- 



fletet'fii Jfliatafte 171 

dour was large. And it seems to me that 
in all his errors, with one possible exception, 
there was a root of true and noble feeling. 
You will observe, in regard to the particu- 
lar mistake which we are now to consider, 
first, that Peter knew that it was a mistake ; 
and, second, that he was not ashamed to say 
so, and to make record of it against himself. 
It is in order to bring out these two points 
that I have chosen the text from St. Mark's 
Gospel. It would have been just as easy to 
take it from St. Matthew or St. Luke, but 
not half so instructive. For that which we 
call the Gospel according to Mark is in 
reality the Gospel according to Peter. Mark 
himself had not been a personal hearer or 
companion of Christ, but he was the evan- 
gelist, the scribe — or, as Papias calls him, 
the interpreter — of Peter, attaching himself 
to the apostle as a disciple and friend, lis- 
tening with eager attention to his remem- 
brances of the life and teachings of the 
Lord Jesus and his intercourse with the 
twelve, and writing down these things with 
conscientious care in order that after Peter's 
death they might not be lost, but faithfully 
given to the church. In effect, therefore, it 



172 Straight Sermons 

is Peter himself who tells us in the text what 
he said on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
It is Peter himself who recognizes the folly 
of it. It is Peter himself who explains it 
with the humble confession that he did not 
know what he was talking about, that he 
said it just for the sake of saying something, 
" for he wist not what to say." 

How hard it is to make an acknowledgment 
like this, to confess that we have spoken 
without thinking, that we have talked non- 
sense ! How many a man says a thing in 
haste or in heat, without fully understanding 
or half meaning it, and then, because he has 
said it, holds fast to it, and tries to defend 
it as if it were true ! But how much wiser, 
how much more admirable and attractive, it 
is when a man has the grace to perceive and 
acknowledge his mistakes ! It gives us assur- 
ance that he is capable of learning, of grow- 
ing, of improving, so that his future will be 
better than his past ; and, especially in an 
autobiography, it makes us feel that we are 
reading, not a cunningly devised fable of 
impossible excellence, but the story of a real 
life. It is difficult to exaggerate the sense 
of confidence which we feel towards this nar- 



Peter's iflistafe* 173 

rative when we hear Peter telling the story 
of his own foolish saying as one of the in- 
cidents of the scene. 

" He wist not what to say ; " he was so 
overwhelmed with wonder and awe, he was 
so carried out of himself, that he felt him- 
self utterly unable to express his feelings. 
His thoughts were shaken from their bal- 
ance by the rush of emotion, and he stam- 
mered out the first words that came to his 
tongue. Something very marvellous must 
have happened to cause this confusion of 
mind. Let us inquire what it was. Let 
us recall the events which immediately pre- 
ceded Peter's mistake. 

Surely we must feel, as we read the sim- 
ple, graphic account which is given by the 
first three Gospels, that we also are like 
Peter, and know not what to say. The 
Transfiguration of Christ is one of those 
wonderfully beautiful things which seem to 
defy analysis or description. When we try 
to conjure up the scene, imagination fails, 
and fancy, dazzled by the radiance, folds her 
wings before her eyes and is lost in dreams. 
Vainly has the genius of poet and painter 
attempted to depict the soft glory of that 



174 Utratjjbt Harmons 

event. The highest achievement even of a 
Raphael falls far short of the reality ; and 
his great picture in the Vatican is in fact 
only a confession of the impotence of the 
loftiest art to rise to the level of the divine. 
But while the actual wonder — the burst of 
splendour which irradiated and transformed 
the body of our blessed Lord — must re- 
main for us a bright, inexplicable mystery, 
there are many details connected with the 
event which we can study and bring out 
more clearly ; and this will certainly help 
us to understand it better. 

In the first place we ought to notice, what 
may have hitherto escaped our attention, 
the time and the circumstances of the event. 
It was not thrown by chance into the his- 
tory of Christ, — a stray flash of glory fall- 
ing without design into the darkness of his 
lowly life. There was a reason why it 
should come just then. There was a close 
connection between the Transfiguration and 
the events which preceded and followed it. 

It was just one week after that memora- 
ble day at Csesarea Philippi, when the noble 
impulsiveness of Peter had led him to make, 
before any of his brethren, that confession 



Peter's jflistaite 175 

of faith which Christ said should be the 
foundation-rock of his church. " Thou art 
the Christ, the son of the living God," cried 
the strong-hearted apostle ; and you remem- 
ber the blessing which followed these words. 
But do you remember also what came after 
that? Do you remember that Jesus then 
began to teach his disciples " that the Son 
of man must suffer many things, and be re- 
jected of the elders and of the chief priests 
and scribes, and be killed, and after three 
days rise again " ? These were hard lessons 
for the disciples to learn, just at the moment 
when their faith in the Master was open- 
ing its first buds of promise. The gospels 
make no secret of the fact that they did not, 
would not, could not believe them. These 
were hard lessons, also, for Jesus to teach. 
The thought of his shameful rejection by 
his people, the cruel treachery of Judas, the 
gloom and anguish of the crucifixion, the 
bitter and inexplicable pangs of the atone- 
ment, pressed heavily upon his soul. They 
seemed to descend upon Him at this time 
with peculiar force and intensity, as a dif- 
fused mist thickens suddenly into an impen- 
etrable cloud. And now began that long 



176 Straij&t Sermons 

agony which culminated in the garden of 
Gethseniane. It was not easy for Christ 
to face shame and death. Not easier, but- 
harder, infinitely harder, than it would have 
been for you and me. 

The week that followed this announcement 
of his approaching crucifixion is passed over 
in silence by the gospels. But we can 
easily believe that it was spent by Christ in 
close and loving intercourse with his disci- 
ples, trying to familiarize them with this sor- 
rowful thought. And then, one evening, 
when the son was sinking in the western 
sky and the cool hush of twilight was fall- 
ing upon the weary world, He separated 
himself from the larger company, and taking 
with Him the three men who were nearest 
to his human heart, — the three who had 
most need and most fitness for such a reve- 
lation as was coming, — He went up into a 
high mountain to pray. He wished seclu- 
sion, but not solitude. He shrank from the 
pressure of the crowd, but not from the soci- 
ety of those whom He loved. 

I think there is something profoundly 
touching in this trait of Jesus' character, — 
that He always, in every experience of the 



Jeter's iHiatalu 177 

highest joy or the deepest sorrow, in the 
death-chamber of Jairus' daughter, at the 
grave of Lazarus, in the garden of Geth- 
semane, and on the Mount of Transfigu- 
ration, wished to have within call of his 
voice, and within reach of his hand, some 
friend whom He knew and trusted, some 
one who could give Him the sense of human 
sympathy. That is a chilly and frost-bound 
disposition which prefers to enjoy its happi- 
ness or bear its grief alone. The presence 
of a friend who can feel with us, even though 
imperfectly, the mere silent presence of a 
friend, even though he be asleep, as the 
friends of Jesus were, is something which 
enhances pleasure and mitigates sorrow in 
every true and noble heart. 

It has long been a tradition of the church 
that the scene of the Transfiguration was 
Mount Tabor. But this has now been gen- 
erally abandoned, because the summit of 
that hill was then occupied by a fortified 
city, and would not have afforded the seclu- 
sion which Jesus sought. It seems to be 
agreed among scholars that the high moun- 
tain which He ascended was one of the long 
ridges of Mount Hermon, that grand snow- 



178 Straight Sermons 

clad barrier which stands between the Holy 
Land and the country of the Gentiles, and 
from whose slopes the pilgrim gains the 
most magnificent prospect over Galilee and 
Samaria, even to Jerusalem and the hills be- 
yond it. The glories of a mountain sunset 
are the same to-day as they were eighteen 
centuries ago, and so we can gather from 
the descriptions of recent travellers a pic- 
ture of the very scene which was spread 
before the eyes of Jesus and his disciples, 
as they climbed the mountain together. 

A deep ruby flush came over the land- 
scape, and warm purple shadows crept slowly 
down the valleys. The Sea of Galilee was 
lit up with a delicate greenish-yellow hue 
between its dim mountain walls. Then the 
flush faded, and a pale steel-colored shade 
followed. A long pyramidal shadow slid 
down to the foot of Hermon and crept 
across the plain, seventy miles away, until 
at last it stood out as a dusky cone of 
darkness against the glowing sky, — the 
shadow of the mountain itself outlined 
against the illimitable heaven. The sun, 
dropping slowly through the western va- 
pours, slid at length into the sea and van- 



fteter'a piatafce 179 

ished like a spark of fire. One by one the 
stars shone out overhead in Eastern bril- 
liancy, and the night rested like a benedic- 
tion upon the world. 

The disciples were weary, weighed down 
with sleep. They folded their garments 
about them and rested, as an Oriental peas- 
ant can always do, upon the bare ground, 
under the roof of heaven. But Jesus prayed, 
— prayed for them, that their faith might 
receive some encouragement, that their eyes 
might be opened like the eyes of Elisha's 
servant, to see the invisible glories about 
them, — prayed for himself, that He might 
receive some fresh assurance of his Father's 
love and favour to strengthen and support 
his heart. And then, — as when a great 
light is kindled within a cathedral, and the 
dark windows are transformed into fountains 
of radiance blazing out into the night, — 
then, by some ebullition of spiritual splen- 
dour from within, the soul of Jesus sent out 
a flood of celestial light and He was trans- 
figured. The celestial form shone through 
the earthly framework, so that his face was 
like the sun and his raiment glistering white 
as light. And with Him appeared Moses, 



180 Strait Sermons 

whom God's own hand had laid in his secret 
grave on Nebo's lonely side, and Elijah, who 
had been carried in the chariot of fire into 
the heavenly world. These two greatest of 
the Old Testament saints, the representatives 
of the Law and the Prophets, appeared with 
Jesus, and " spake of his decease which He 
should accomplish at Jerusalem," 

Surely we cannot fail to see the purpose 
of this marvellous event. It was to uplift 
and cheer the soul of Jesus with the thought 
of the glory into which He should return by 
the sorrowful way of the cross. It was a 
foretaste of the exceeding great reward of 
his sacrificial love. It was a touch of the 
joy of heaven to help Him to bear the suffer- 
ings of earth. And it was an assurance of 
the sympathy of the celestial world with 
his great purpose of sacrifice and death. 
His disciples did not yet understand this 
purpose. They could not talk with Him 
about it in any such way as to help Him. 
They could only protest against it, and strive 
to restrain Him. But the saints in glory 
understood what He was doing. They bent 
from heaven to follow with loving, wonder- 
ing eyes his steadfast journeyings towards 



Peter's f&i&tzkt 181 

the cross ; and when they were permitted to 
speak with Him, they talked of that great, 
world-redeeming death from which his flesh 
shrank, but for which his divine heart was 
ready and longing. 

There is a strange suggestiveness in this 
conversation. Who can tell how much the 
blessed dead know of our lives here upon 
earth ! It may be that they are following 
our paths even now with wise and tender 
eyes, rejoicing in our victories, sympathiz- 
ing wdth us in every noble endeavor, in 
every pure resolve, in every unselfish suffer- 
ing for love. 

" There is no place where earth's sorrows 
Are more felt than up in heaven.' ' 

It may be that some saint dearer to you 
than any whose names are written among the 
Old Testament worthies — your own faith- 
ful mother, the father who prayed with you 
at the family altar, the friend who walked 
close beside you in the journey of life — is 
looking down upon you and watching your 
path to-day. And of this be sure : If you 
are following in the footsteps of Christ, if 
you are trying to do good, if you are sacrifi- 
cing yourself for others, if you are treading 



182 ilrttaia&t Sermons 

the path of duty and devotion, these are 
the things which they understand, and for 
which they bless and love you. You may be 
misunderstood, you may be misrepresented 
by your friends on earth: but with every- 
thing that is good, with all noble suffering, 
there is perfect sympathy in heaven. 

The disciples, who had been asleep when 
the Transfiguration began, were awake be- 
fore it ended. The radiance shining about 
them opened their eyes ; they roused them- 
selves ; they saw their Master in his glory ; 
they heard the great lawgiver and the great 
prophet talking with Him about that death 
which seemed so incredible. It must have 
been an overwhelming, wonderful, joyous 
vision. It was in one sense a rebuke to their 
own weakness and want of sympathy, and 
yet this rebuke must have been almost swal- 
lowed up and forgotten in the glad assurance 
that their Master was indeed the Messiah. 
They must have looked with unspeakable 
awe, they must have listened with inexpres- 
sible delight. But when the vision began to 
fade, when the forms of the heavenly visi- 
tants grew dim before their departure, Peter 
could keep silence no longer ; he felt that he 



Peter** Jftistafce 183 

must speak, though he knew not what to say. 
He cried, " Master, it is good for us to be 
here : and let us make three tabernacles ; 
one for thee, and one for Moses, and one 
for Elias." 

Now you will observe that this saying of 
Peter's may be divided into two parts. The 
first part is all right. It is perfectly true. 
It was good for them to be there. Other- 
wise, Christ would not have brought them 
there. It was a glorious and joyful and 
profitable hour. The memory of it was to 
remain with them all through their lives as 
a source of comfort and encouragement and 
strength. It was a good thing for Peter and 
James and John that they had been with 
their Master and seen his glory in the holy 
mount. But Peter made his mistake when 
he said, " Let us make three tabernacles and 
stay here forever." 

I. It was a mistake, in the first place, to 
suppose that the building of the tabernacles 
would have done any good. 

It would not have detained the fleeting 
vision, or perpetuated the transitory de- 
light. Moses and Elias had to return to 
their places in the heavenly world. Jesus 



184 H>trai£l)t Sermons 

had to go down to the valley to heal the poor 
demoniac, and tread his appointed path to 
the cross. Peter and James and John had 
to take care of their families, and be pre- 
pared for their work as missionaries and 
martyrs of the gospel. The ecstasy could 
not be prolonged. The mountain-top must 
be deserted. 

I have seen in the little English city of 
Salisbury the great cathedral. It was built 
when a flood-tide of religious enthusiasm was 
sweeping over the world. Thousands might 
worship, thousands have worshipped, within 
that splendid fane, and its walls were not 
able to contain the great flood of devotion. 
But the tide has ebbed ; the ecstatic vision 
has faded. The mighty cathedral stands ; 
but a handful of worshippers can scarcely 
keep a sleepy rivulet of praise flowing in a 
corner of the building. No tabernacle can 
detain a moment of religious enthusiasm ; 
and if Peter and his friends had built the 
grandest cathedral in the world on the ridge 
of Mount Hermon, it might have been empty 
and bare to-day. 

II. It was a mistake, in the second place, 
to suppose that the disciples had any right 



Jhter'a JHiatafee 185 

to remain on the glory-smitten summit and 
to enjoy the wondrous vision at their own 
pleasure. 

It was a foretaste of heaven, but heaven 
belongs to God, and to those whom He has 
called to be with Him. Peter wanted to stay 

' there before his time had come. He wanted 
to enjoy the rest, the blessedness, the glory 

r of the celestial world before he had lived 
out his life and finished his work on earth. 
He wanted to have the crown without the 
cross. 

How natural this is ! How often we have 
felt like Peter ! How often we have longed 
to escape from the turmoil and temptation 
of this evil world and dwell in some calm 
and lofty region of religious ecstasy, hold- 
ing unbroken communion with God ! This 
is the feeling that has often withdrawn the 
purest men and women from their duties in 
the working world to spend their lives in 
sweet contemplation amid the quietude of 
convents and monasteries. I suppose Bun- 
yan's Pilgrim would gladly have stayed in 
the House Beautiful, I suppose he hated 
to go down from the Delectable Mountains. 
But he had to go. The only way to the 



186 J^ttaijj&t Sermons 

heavenly city led through the rough valley 
and over the weary plain. 

There is no gate into heaven except at the 
end of the path of duty. There is not even 
an honoured and peaceful grave for us until 
we can say with the Master, " I have glorified 
thee on the earth, I have finished the work 
thou gavest me to do." 

III. It was a mistake, in the third place, to 
suppose that, because it was good for them to 
be there at one time, it would have been good 
for them to be there always. 

Even if the vision could have tarried, even 
if God had permitted the tabernacles to be 
built, it would not have been best for Peter 
to abide on that mountain-top. It might have 
made him selfish and cold ; it might have ab- 
sorbed in the exercises of personal devotion 
all the warmth of that great, generous heart 
which God designed to use in making the 
world purer and better and happier. There 
was a deeper, richer blessing provided for 
Peter in the fellowship of suffering with 
Christ, and in the reward of faithful labour 
for the spread of the Master's kingdom of 
righteousness and peace and joy. So it came 
to pass that there was no answer to his foolish 



Peter's instate 187 

proposal ; only a great silence, while the lumi- 
nous cloud swept lower to enclose the three 
shining forms ; and then a voice from the 
cloud, " This is my beloved Son, hear Him." 
Suddenly the vision had vanished ; " they 
saw no man any more, save Jesus only with 
themselves ; " and He led them down to help 
a poor, sick, human child in the valley, and 
deliver him from the evil spirits that tor- 
mented him. 

My friends, there are two kinds of religion 
in the world, — the religion that is heavy with 
self, and the religion that is strong with love. 
There are some people who mix opium with 
their Christianity. It soothes and charms 
them; it gives them pleasant dreams and 
emotions ; it lifts them above the world in 
joyous reveries. They would fain prolong 
them and dwell in them, and enjoy an un- 
earned felicity. Their favourite hymn is, — 

" My willing- soul would stay- 
in such a frame as this, 
And sit and sing- herself away 
To everlasting bliss." 

But no one ever got to everlasting bliss by 
that method. The world has small need of 
a religion which consists solely or chiefly of 



188 §>tratsl)t Harmons 

emotions and raptures. But the religion 
that follows Jesus Christ, alike when He 
goes up into the high mountain to pray and 
when He comes down into the dark valley to 
work ; the religion that listens to Him, alike 
when He tells us of the peace and joy of the 
Father's house and when He calls us to feed 
his lambs ; the religion that is willing to 
suif er as well as to enjoy, to labour as well as 
to triumph ; the religion that has a soul to 
worship God, and a heart to love man, and 
a hand to help in every good cause, — is pure 
and undefiled. 

Try your religious emotions, your expe- 
riences of secret inward joy and peace, by 
this test. If they make you selfish, if you 
seek to prolong them unduly or excite them 
by artificial means, they are false and worth- 
less. But if they make you kind and brave 
and helpful, if you are willing to come down 
from them, when you are called, to do hard, 
and distasteful, and even menial, work for 
your Master and your fellow-men, if the 
vision of faith has its fruits in the life of 
charity, then be thankful to Him who has 
revealed himself to you more clearly in order 
that you may love Him more dearly, and 



fttttfz iWustafce 189 

follow Him more faithfully in the service of 
humanity. 

Remember that in this world every moun- 
tain-top of privilege is girdled by the vales 
of lowly duty. 

Remember that the transfiguration of the 
soul is but the preparation and encourage- 
ment for the sacrifice of the life. 

Remember that we are not to tarry in the 
transitory radiance of Mount Hermon, but 
to press on to the enduring glory of Mount 
Zion, and that we can only arrive at that 
final and blessed resting-place by the way 
of Mount Calvary. 

Remember that Peter's mistake is cor- 
rected and explained by Peter's own words 
in the full experience of the school of Christ. 
For the Spirit of Jesus was in him, and 
taught him what to say, when he wrote at 
the close of his life : — 

" Beloved, think it not strange concerning 
the fiery trial which is to try you, as though 
some strange thing happened unto you. But 
rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of 
Christ's sufferings, that when his glory shall 
be revealed ye may be glad also with exceed- 
ing joy." 



IX 
GOD OVER ALL 



( Cljat pe map be tlje cfnlUren of pour jFatljer to&uf) 
is in Ijeatont ; for $>e mafcetl) \>i& mn to xm on 
tf)e eUil anU on tlje poll, anU sttn&etl) rain on tlje 
jttgt antr on tj>e uniufiJt*** 

Matthew v. 45. 



" |>e mafeetJ) Ins mn to rise on tjje etril atifc on t&e 
ffooU, an& aenfcetf) rain on t&e just anU on ti\t 
ttnjttat*" 

This is a simple statement of a familiar 
fact. We do not need any convention of 
scientists to assure us of its truth, nor any 
bulletin of the Weather Bureau to bear wit- 
ness to its accuracy. A little experience is 
enough to convince us that what we call the 
processes of Nature are thoroughly impartial. 
They do not discriminate. They are quite 
regardless of moral character. 

All through the summer that is past, the 
sun has been shining and the rain has been 
falling on the fields without regard to the 
moral or religious differences of their owners. 
There is no peculiar blessing on Protestant 
potatoes. The corn and pumpkins in the 
stingy farmer's fields are ripening just as 
surely and just as abundantly as those which 
have been planted and hoed by the most 



194 Jrttatc^t Sermons 

generous of men. All you have to do is to 
sow the seed and till the soil, and Nature will 
do the rest without asking what manner of 
man you are. 

But is there not something strange about 
this fact ? Familiar as it is. growing more 
and more plain to us. working itself more 
and more firmly into our experience the 
longer we live, when we stop to look at it 
and interrogate it more closely does it not 
puzzle and confound us? Does it not in- 
troduce a strange and. so to speak, irreli- 
gious element into our conception of the 
world and human life ? 

If we regarded Nature as impersonal, and 
the universe as a material mechanism, we 
should find no difficulty in it. For then this 
shining of the sun and falling of the rain 
upon the evil and the good, this procession 
of the seasons, this interflow of forces and 
influences which work together in produe- 
tiveness. this germinating of the seed and 
unfolding of the blade and forming of the 
ear and ripening of the full corn in the ear. 
— the same for every child of man who toils 
and waits. — all this would be to us only the 
proof and illustration of what we shoidd call 



45oU otoer ail 195 



the large indifference of Nature. What 
does she care for us or for our doings ? She, 
the vast, impersonal, unimpassioned Being 
who is first our unfeeling mother, and then, 
when we have conquered her, our obedient 
slave, — we who are first her offspring, and 
then, when we are clever enough, her mas- 
ters, — what does Nature care for us, or for 
those dreams of ours which we call virtue 
and vice ? It all goes on by order and un- 
conscious law. Suns rise and set. Clouds 
gather and sweep by. Tides ebb and flow. 
The dews descend and the grass springs. 
The grain-field changes from green to gold. 
The mellow apples ripen and fall. The vine 
feeds the deep purple of its clusters with the 
autumn's blood, and the many-foliaged forest 
clothes itself with a splendour of death. 
Man comes into the great world. He is 
weak but clever. He looks on Nature with 
his intelligent eyes, sees his advantage and 
follows it up. He makes the sun feed him 
and the animals work for him. He wanders 
through the world grasping its fruits as he 
can reach them, gathering with painful toil 
the slow results of a niggard year, or crush- 
ing with eager hands the rich grapes of 



196 JaJtraifljt Sermon* 

plenty ; and then, with the cry of want or 
song of gladness on his lips, he is gone ; his 
place is empty, his grave is full, and suns 
shine and rains fall upon his tombstone even 
as they once shone and fell upon him. It is 
a wondrous pageant, but there is no meaning 
in it, no purpose in the play, no moral in the 
story, and we need not try to understand or 
explain it, because there is nothing to ex- 
plain or understand, so long as Nature is 
unconscious and impersonal. 

But the moment we see God behind the 
face of Nature, — the moment we believe that 
this vast and marvellous procession of sea- 
sons and causes and changes, this array of in- 
terworking forces, is directed and controlled 
by a Supreme, Omniscient, Holy Spirit, 
whose will is manifest in the springing of 
the seed, the ripening of the fruit, the fad- 
ing of the leaf, the shining of the sun, and 
the falling of the rain, — this indifference be- 
comes incomprehensible and impossible. It 
cannot be that God is indifferent. It cannot 
be that He cares not whether the dwellers 
upon his earth are wicked or righteous, foul 
or pure, selfish or generous. It cannot be 
that He looks down with the same feelings 



(So* ober ail 197 



upon all who move below Him, and has an 
equal approbation for the toil of the honest 
labourer and the crafty schemes of the thief. 

You tell me that Nature is indifferent. I 
say, Not if God is behind Nature. 

You tell me that it matters not whether 
the hand that guides the plow be pure and 
clean, or wicked and defiled. Nature feels 
alike and will do alike for both. I say, Not 
if God is behind Nature, not if Nature is the 
expression of his will. He may do alike, 
but He does not feel alike. As well say that 
He who made light and darkness cannot dis- 
tinguish between them, as that He whose 
will is the moral law ever forgets it, ignores 
it, casts it aside, in any sphere or mode of 
his action. Evermore He loves the good, 
the true, the noble. Evermore He hates the 
base, the false, the evil. Evermore iniquity 
is an abomination unto Him, and righteous- 
ness is his delight. 

Why, then, does He not always discrimi- 
nate in all his dealings ? "Why does the earth 
yield her increase as generously to the mur- 
derer as to the saint ? Why do the glories 
of summer spread themselves as freely be- 
fore the eyes of haggard wickedness as be- 



198 Straight Sermons 

fore the childlike eyes of innocence and love ? 
Why is not the pathway of virtue always 
crowned with fragrance and light, and the 
way of vice dark and dreary with tempests 
and thorns ? Why, since God is wise and 
just and sovereign, why does his sun shine 
and his rain fall equally upon the evil and 
good? 

There is a meaning, there is a purpose in 
it, as in all his dealings. And what we need 
is the clear eye, the attentive mind, the en- 
lightened heart, to discern and understand 
and accept it. 

I. And, first of all, I think it is evident 
that He would thus teach us to believe in his 
Fatherhood in its widest aspect of benignity. 
He would manifest his abounding kindness 
to all the children of men. In the return of 
winter and summer, seed-time and harvest, 
in the constant delight and glory of Nature's 
pageant, and the bounteous results of the 
recurring seasons, He is opening his hand 
and supplying the wants of all his creatures. 
The open hand, not the blind eye nor the 
unfeeling heart, but the open hand, is the 
true symbol of God's dealing with mankind 
in the natural world. And this changes all, 



(So* otoer ail 199 



instantly and totally. Instead of the large 
indifference of Nature, we have the great 
beneficence of God. Instead of an uncon- 
scious mechanism, grinding out the same 
results and careless of the hands into which 
they fall, we have the wise and generous 
Father making ample and equal provision 
for all his children, bad and good. Do we 
not understand this? Do we not see the 
analogy and parallel in our human life ? 

In every family there may be children, 
perhaps not more and less beloved, but surely 
more and less approved. There are some 
that come closer to the father's heart, obedi- 
ent, generous, affectionate; answering every 
call upon their love ; rendering swift, uncon- 
scious services of help and comfort ; weaving 
themselves into the very inmost life, and 
growing dearer with every day and year. 
And there are some that cannot or will not 
come so near ; cold, dull, irresponsive ; set 
chiefly upon the following of their own wills 
and the pleasing of their own desires ; living 
by their own choice and disposition farther 
and farther away from those that gave them 
birth, and sometimes wilfully wounding and 
bruising the hearts to which they ought to 



200 ^traiffbt Sermons 

be most closely bound. Is it possible that 
the father should feel alike towards both? 
He cannot and does not. Even though he 
does not speak of it, even though he does 
not show it, there is a vast, a world-wide 
difference. 

And yet they are all his children. For 
all of them his heart is tender and his care 
watchful. And for all of them he will pro- 
vide with an impartial benevolence. It is 
a point of honour with him. He will do the 
best he can for all. He will defend their 
helplessness, and provide for their needs, and 
keep the sweet shelter of home around them 
all, for are they not all his children ? 

Are we not also the offspring of God? 
Yes, every one of us, the lowest as well as 
the highest. He is the Father of us all. 

We do not dare to think that there is even 
one forgotten, despised, disowned. God will 
not let us think so. With clear, sweet, but 
silent voice, He is assuring every child of 
man that the heavens above his head are not 
empty, but filled with the presence of a Di- 
vine Father, and that the earth beneath his 
feet is not a strange and desert place, but 
the soil of his own home, in which paternal 



(SoU ober 3UI 201 



bounty will make provision for his wants. 
Every ray of sunlight that falls from heaven, 
every drop of rain that waters the fruitful 
ground, is saying to the heart of man, "My 
child, this a Father's impartial kindness 
sends to thee." 

If men would only hear it! Oh that the 
deaf ear and the dull heart might be touched 
and opened to the beautiful speech of the 
seasons, so that plenty might draw all souls 
to gratitude, and beauty move all spirits to 
worship, and every fair landscape, and every 
overflowing harvest, and every touch of love- 
liness and grace upon the face of the world, 
might lift all souls that live and feel from 
Nature up to Nature's God! This is what 
He longs for. This is what He means when 
He tells us, in his impartial sunshine and 
rain, that He is the Father of all mankind. 

II. But I think it is clear also that God 
uses this large impartiality in the gifts of 
Nature to teach us that this world is not a 
place of judgment, but a place of probation, 
in w r hich the good and the evil are working 
side by side, not only in the same commu- 
nity but in the same character, and not to be 
finally separated until they have produced 



202 §>trai£J)t Sermons 

their fixed and final results. Discrimina- 
tions and judgments in regard to qualities 
and actions are to a certain extent necessary. 
We say of self-sacrifice that it is good. We 
say of lying that it is evil. We call some 
men pure and noble. We call others base 
and wicked. But we do not say of any liv- 
ing, breathing human being, "That is a lost, 
hopeless sinner, with nothing but evil in 
him." 

We dare not say it, for God himself does 
not say it. The parable of the wheat and 
the tares applies not only to the world at 
large, but also, and just as truly, to the indi- 
vidual soul. It is only in novels that the 
villains are absolutely bad, while the heroes 
and heroines are immaculately good. In 
real life, men and women are all somewhat 
mixed, and every soul is more or less an 
enigma to itself. 

We look into our own hearts and we are 
puzzled. We cannot interpret all that is 
within them. The strange mingling flow of 
impulses and emotions and desires, the under- 
current of half-unconscious motives and the 
after-play of repentance and regret, making 
the colour of our actions change with the 



<0<tf otar an 203 



changing light, — all this troubles and con- 
fuses us. We cry in all sincerity, " I cannot 
understand myself. There is something here 
that I cannot judge." And from the shining 
sun and the falling rain comes the clear, kind, 
patient voice of God, " Neither do I judge 
thee yet. Not yet is thy final place assigned. 
Not yet is thy trial ended. The days of life 
are still thine. The sun still shines and the 
rain still falls upon thy fields. Thou mayest 
be sunken deep in evil, but thou still hast 
hope, for behold I spare thee still, I still am 
waiting. I do not judge thee yet." 

"Not yet," "not yet," — how solemnly the 
warning of these words mingles with the 
sweet assurance of a lingering hope for every 
child of man ! How clearly the patient refusal 
to judge now, reveals the certainty that God 
will judge hereafter ! If this world is only 
a place of probation, then beyond it there 
must be a place of judgment. If, in the dis- 
tribution of this world's goods, the wicked 
and the righteous fare alike ; if it sometimes 
seems that the wicked fare even better in 
their iniquity, while in the proudness of 
their heart they wax fat, — then surely, in the 
world to come, the just God must make com- 



204 U>traigj)t S>enrums 

pensation. Dishonesty, and cruelty, and 
selfish lust will receive their punishment at 
the end. The sweet sun will not shine for- 
ever, and the cool rain will not always fall 
upon the evil-doers. Nor shall those who 
have waited patiently and lived purely fail 
of their reward. God cannot disinherit them. 
Their harvest will surely come in the world 
of light. 

How precious, then, how costly and invalu- 
able, is every day and hour of this mortal 
life in which the warm sunlight and the 
gentle rain assure us that the upward way is 
still open to us! We may still sow that 
good seed which shall bear fruit unto eternal 
life. But how long, for you and me, how 
long shall this time of hope endure? The 
night cometh. Who can tell ? 

III. Once more, I think that God deals 
thus kindly with the evil as well as with the 
good, in order to make known to all men the 
length and breadth of his forgiving love. 
The length and breadth, not the height and 
depth of it, for that could only be expressed 
in Jesus Christ, coming down from heaven 
to die for the world. Thus only could the 
fidness of God's love be manifest. 



<SM ober &il 205 



But something of its largeness, some shad- 
owing forth of its generosity and freedom, 
can be discovered in the process of Nature. 

" There 's a wideness in God's mercy- 
Like the wideness of the sea." 

Yes, and like the spreading glories of the 
sunset, and like the flowing of a great river, 
and like the dropping of the gentle dew from 
heaven. These all tell us, and tell us truly, 
of the heart of God, who is willing to forgive, 
and longing to do good unto all men. It is 
narrated of the great novelist, Thackeray, 
that he was once walking with a friend at 
evening on the hills near Edinburgh. The 
sun sank slowly to his rest, leaving a trail of 
glory behind him, and the solemn splendours 
of the sky deepened above the crowded tene- 
ments, the dark, foul, noisome streets, the 
pain and misery and want, of the old town. 
Thackeray looked at it long in silence, and 
then, turning to his companion with tears in 
his eyes, he said, " Calvary." 

Think of it, friends ! God bestows all the 
beauty and all the loveliness of the world 
upon sinners such as we are. Even though 
we have disobeyed Him and rebelled against 
Him, his hand still feeds us. Even though 



206 Jhratsirt Strmtms 

our hearts are filled with vileness, his pure- 
eyed stars look down on us in tenderness 
and compassion. Even though we should 
wander far away and forget Him, and steep 
ourselves in wickedness, his sun would still 
shine, his rain would still fall for us. Look 
up, look up, thou prodigal child, lost to thy- 
self and to thy home, sunken in vice and full 
of inward misery, thou art not lost to thy 
Father. For lo ! with every morning above 
thine evil and unhappy head, 

" God makes himself an awful rose of dawn." 

And even as his light follows and caresses 
thee wherever thou mayest roam, so his love 
is close to thee, and his mercy waiting to 
welcome thee, if thou wilt but turn to Him. 

But are there not also some practical les- 
sons which we, as Christians, may learn from 
God's impartial and generous distribution of 
the gifts of nature? Is there not a sweet 
and gentle instruction for the daily life to 
be derived from the sun which shines and 
the rain which falls alike upon the evil and 
upon the good? Our Divine Master thought 
there was, and used this lovely parable to 



®o& obet ail 207 



convey a most precious lesson to the hearts 
of his disciples, a lesson of charity and pa- 
tience and forgiving love. 

For surely this proof of the Fatherhood 
of God ought to deepen in our hearts the 
sense of the Brotherhood of man. When we 
see Him providing with equal hands for all 
men, causing the grass to spring and the 
flowers to bloom and the stars to shine for 
the whole world, treating even the outcast 
and despised of men with impartial kindness, 
surely we ought to feel more profoundly and 
more tenderly the ties which bind together 
all those whom God hath made of one blood 
to dwell together on the face of the earth. 
Our artificial life, the life which seems in- 
separable from the advance of civilization 
and the growth of large cities, tends to 
deepen and exaggerate what w r e call " class 
distinctions." It keeps men far apart from 
each other, creates misunderstanding and 
distrust. Too often it awakens evil passions 
of pride and contempt among the rich, to be 
met by the equally evil passions of envy and 
hatred among the poor. When we feel these 
influences stealing over us, when we find 
that we are learning to think of ourselves 



208 Urtraig&t Sermons 

and our friends as the finest porcelain and 
of the rest of mankind as common clay, 
when we begin to reckon the worth of man- 
hood and womanhood by the possession of 
wealth and the richness of attire, then it is 
well for us to 

" Go forth into the light of things ; 
Let Nature be our teacher." 

See how God's great sun laughs at our 
pride, shining with equal radiance upon the 
cottage and upon the palace, and painting 
for the eyes of all richer pictures than the 
wealth of Croesus can buy. See how God's 
sweet rain ignores our vanity, falling as 
gently and as generously upon the poor 
child's box of mignonette in the window as 
upon the costliest roses in the parterre. See 
how all things that God has made tell us of 
an impartial Father's love which ought to 
waken in our hearts a brother's kindness for 
our fellow-men. 

But more than this, we ought to learn from 
the truth so simply expressed in the text and 
so often illustrated before our eyes. We 
ought to see in God's forbearance to judge 
men a lesson of forbearance to us. 

We are too quick : not often too quick to 



®ott otoer 9UI 209 



approve, but very often too quick to con- 
demn. We think it confers a sort of dignity 
and virtue to say of other men and women 
that they are bad. We are in haste to don 
the judicial ermine and put on the black 
cap and pronounce sentence. We foster evil 
reports, and repeat gossip, and devour our 
fellows like cannibals. Who art thou that 
judgest another? Remember Christ's words 
to the scribes and Pharisees. Remember his 
words to his own disciples, " Judge not, that 
ye be not judged." How can we read the 
hidden motives, how can we know the deep 
repentance and regret that enter into the 
lives about us? Beware of censoriousness. 
This world of impartial sunlight and equal 
falling rain is not the place of judgment. 
And, thank God, you and I are not, either 
here or hereafter, the final judges. My heart 
would shrink in speechless terror from decid- 
ing the destiny of a single human soul. That 
belongs to God ; and to God not now, but 
when the shadows of time have been lost in 
the light of eternity. 

Finally, my friends, when we see God for- 
giving all men who have sinned against Him, 
sparing them in his mercy, and showering 



210 Straight §>ermanfii 

his bounty alike upon the evil and the good, 
let us take the gracious lesson of forgiveness 
to our hearts. Why should we hate like 
Satan when we may forgive like God? 
Why should we cherish malice, envy, and 
all uncharitableness in our breasts ? I know 
that some people use us despitefully and 
show themselves our enemies, but why should 
we fill our hearts with their bitterness and 
inflame our wounds with their poison ? This 
world is too sweet and fair to darken it with 
the clouds of anger. This life is too short 
and precious to waste it in bearing that 
heaviest of all burdens, a grudge. Forgive 
and forget if you can ; hut forgive anyway; 
and pray heartily and kindly for all men, for 
thus only shall we be the children of our 
Father who maketh his sun to rise on the 
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
the just and on the unjust. 



X 

THE HORIZON 

W§t secret t&tna* ielong; tmto tlje Lor* our 
(Soft : tut tljose tfungfi toljicl) are resales be- 
long; unto tta anU to our cljtIUren foretoer, tfjat 
toe map Ho all tfje toor&a of tU& Iato/' 

Deuteronomy xxix. 29. 



"C&e secret tftingp belong unto t&e Lor& our 
(Soft: but tfrose things tojjicl) are retoealeti be= 
Ions ttnto us an& to our clnl&ren foreber, t&at 
toe map Ho all t&e toorfcs of tins Iato«" 

There is no landscape which is not 
bounded by the horizon. This fact is the 
symbol of a profound truth. It reminds 
us that our powers are finite and limited. 
However high we may climb to win a wider 
outlook, our vision will touch its confines 
and the known will be ringed about by the 
unknown. This is the Doctrine of the Hori- 
zon, 

Now the text applies this truth to religion. 
It speaks of things revealed and declares 
that they belong to us. And in speaking 
thus it appeals to our religious instinct, our 
spiritual common - sense. For a religion 
which contained no real disclosure of the 
divine to our minds and hearts would have 
no meaning and therefore no value. The 



214 Sttaij&t i&nrmona 

horizon must include something. It is idle 
to talk of the religious sentiments of awe, 
reverence, humility, and gratitude as if they 
could exist without any known motive or 
object. That of which we are, and must 
remain, altogether ignorant can never in- 
fluence our belief, our worship, or our con- 
duct. 

A religion all mystery is a light all dark- 
ness. It does not help us in the least when 
a philosopher spells the Unknowable with a 
capital U and advises us to worship It. For 
when we ask him what to believe about It, 
he can only answer, " Believe that you can 
never know what It is ; " and when we ask 
him what to say to It, he can only answer 
" Say nothing ; " and when we ask him what 
It would have us do for Its glory, he can 
only answer, " You must find out for yourself, 
for It will never tell you." A religion of 
this kind, a religion of the Unknowable, is a 
large name for something which has no ex- 
istence : it is an idle word dancing recklessly 
on the brink of nonsense. Certainly it is 
not the religion of the Bible which discloses 
a God who has made himself known unto 
men ; nor of Paul, who said, " Whom there- 



)ori?on 215 



fore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare we 
unto you ; " nor of Christ, who said to the 
Samaritans, " Ye worship ye know not what : 
we know what we worship." 

But the text also speaks of secret things, 
and affirms that they belong unto the Lord 
our God. This also is a reasonable voice 
and one that carries conviction to our spirit. 
For certainly a religion that professed to 
reveal and explain everything, and to make 
the moral order of the universe and the 
nature and plans of God as plain to our com- 
prehension as a map of the United States, — 
a religion that contained no mystery, would 
be quite as incredible as a religion that 
was all mystery. We find insoluble prob- 
lems and undiscoverable secrets in nature, 
and we expect to find them in theology. 
There is something hidden even in the least 
and lowest form of life, why not also in the 
highest and greatest? Do you remember 
Tennyson's poem of " The Flower " ? 

" Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies, 
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 



216 i&traij&t Sermon* 

But that is precisely what we cannot 
attain : a perfect comprehension, a complete 
knowledge, a vision without a horizon, even 
in regard to the smallest things. And if we 
do not look for this in the realm of the 
finite, surely we cannot dream of reaching it 
in the realm of the Infinite. Anything that 
a telescope could discover among the stars, 
anything that logic could define and explain 
and fit into an exact philosophical system, 
would not be God. For it belongs to his 
very essence that He transcends our thought, 
and that his judgments are unsearchable and 
his ways past finding out. We do not know 
anything about God unless we know that 
we cannot know Him perfectly. 

Modest ignorance is a necessary element 
of true theology. Bishop Butler says, " The 
monarchy of the Universe is a dominion un- 
limited in extent and everlasting in duration : 
the general system of it must therefore be 
quite beyond our comprehension." Rich- 
ard Hooker says, " We know not God as 
He is, neither can know Him. His glory 
is inexplicable, his greatness above our ca- 
pacity and reach." And this is but an echo 
of the majestic language of the Bible : " It 



€&e 5>ott2on 217 



is as high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? 
deeper than hell ; what canst thou know? 
The measure thereof is longer than the earth 
and broader than the sea." " For we know 
in part and we prophesy in part. But when 
that which is perfect is come, then that which 
is in part shall be done away." 

The partial knowledge of divine things, 
the line which divides God's secrets from 
his revelations, the necessary horizon of re- 
ligious thought, — this is the subject to 
which I would call your attention. Let us 
observe the fact that it exists, and the dan- 
gers of trying to go beyond it, and the ad- 
vantages of keeping within it. 

I. It is a simple fact that we cannot know 
all about God. Natural theology, of course, 
is limited. Revealed theology widens the 
boundaries of our knowledge, but does not 
abolish them. The Bible does not profess 
to make men omniscient, but simply to tell 
them enough to make them happy and good, 
if they will believe it and live up to it. It 
does indeed lift man above the level of his 
natural ignorance ; but even as one who has 
gained a wider view of the world by ascend- 
ing a lofty mountain still finds his sight cir- 



218 i§>traiff!)t Sermons; 

cumscribed by a new horizon, so those who 
receive the revelations which are contained 
in Holy Scripture still discover a verge beyond 
which their thought cannot pass, and find 
themselves shut in by the secret things 
which belong unto God. Indeed, this fact 
of limitation is itself one of the things re- 
vealed. Not to the sea alone, but also to 
the questioning intellect of man does God 
say, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no fur- 
ther: and here shall thy proud waves be 
stayed." 

Take your Bible, and see how far it leads 
you on, and how firmly it holds you back ; 
how much it discloses, and how much it 
hides. Everywhere you can see the horizon 
line running sharply around the things re- 
vealed and hiding the things secret. 

In regard to God himself, it seems to me 
that his character is revealed and his essence 
is secret. His moral attributes are made 
known to us so that we cannot mistake them. 
He is just and holy, merciful and compas- 
sionate, bountiful and loving, and He dis- 
closes these qualities so fully in his self-reve- 
lation in Jesus Christ that they become clear 
and distinct and indubitable to us ; they be- 



€&e |)ori^0n 219 



long to us and to our children forever. We 
know Him as the Father of our spirits, for 
Jesus Christ says, " He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father." But his metaphysi- 
cal attributes, the ground and mode and form 
of his existence, are behind the veil. Om- 
niscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, — 
when we speak these words we do not define 
God, we simply name the limits of our 
thought about Him. They are lines which 
run out into infinity ; and when we try to 
follow them with our logic, they lead us 
into a region where argument is vain and 
definition is absurd. Do you remember what 
Moses saw in the mount? He said unto 
the Lord, "I beseech thee show me thy 
glory." But God answered, " I will make 
all my goodness pass before thee." Here 
is the boundary-line of knowledge : God's 
goodness is revealed ; but his glory is be- 
yond the horizon. 

And does not the same line run between 
the purposes of God which He has declared 
in Jesus Christ and the means of executing 
those purposes ? We believe that God is 
the Euler of the universe, and that He in- 
tends that his will shall be done on earth 



220 il>trai$)t &ermtm* 

even as it is done in heaven. It is his will to 
punish the wicked and to reward the right- 
eous ; to judge the obstinate and to have 
mercy upon the penitent ; to vanquish the 
evil and to establish the good; to destroy 
death and him that hath the power of death, 
that is, the devil, and in the fulness of time 
to gather together in one all things in Christ, 
both which are in heaven and which are on 
earth. Nothing could be more certain to 
those who believe in God than this mighty 
purpose. But nothing could be more inscru- 
table than the manner of its accomplishment. 
We know that God is sovereign. We know 
also that man is free, for the whole gospel is 
an appeal to his power of choice ; the offer 
of pardon and life would be an absurdity, a 
deception, a moral mockery if he were not 
able to receive or to reject it at will. Both 
truths are revealed, both are sure and pre- 
cious. But they come together in a line 
which is the absolute boundary of our vision, 
even as the ocean and the sky meet, but do 
not mingle, at the edge of the world. That 
is the horizon. Beyond that we cannot see. 
What is all this reasoning and syllogizing 
about an eternal decree which determines 



Cjje 5>ort20n 221 



the fate of every soul, this logical analysis of 
the relations between the human spirit which 
must be passive and the Divine Spirit which 
is given unto them who are appointed unto 
life and not unto them who are appointed 
unto death, — what is it all but a vain effort 
to go beyond the horizon ? 

Here is the sea on which you float, the 
sea of human life, with its shifting tides 
and currents. Yonder is the sky that bends 
above you, the pure and sovereign will of 
God. Out of that unsearchable heaven 
comes the breath of the Spirit, like " the 
wind that bloweth where it listeth, and thou 
canst not tell whence it cometh and whither 
it goeth." If you will spread your sail to 
catch that breath of life, if you will lay your 
course and keep your rudder true, you will 
be carried onward in peace and safety to 
your desired haven. Nay, more : if there 
seems to be no breeze stirring near you, if 
you feel that you are lying idle and help- 
less in a dead calm, drifting upon the dark 
currents which may bear you to destruction, 
you have only to ask for the saving breath 
and it will come. For earthly parents are 
not more willing to give good gifts unto their 



222 H>traia!)t Sermons 

children than your Heavenly Father to give 
his Spirit unto them that ask Him. Ask, 
then, ask for what you can surely have, and 
sail, and steer, and leave the secret things to 
God. 

Again, we may see the line of division 
running between the laws of God which are 
revealed and the final judgment of God 
which is secret. He has shown us what He 
would have us do. " What doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " 
He has declared that He will reward every 
man according to his works. He has made 
known the riches of his grace, his willing- 
ness to forgive the penitent, and to help the 
fallen, in Jesus Christ ; and by the same lips 
He has made known his indignation against 
those who will not repent, nor trust in his 
mercy, nor show to others that love which 
God has shown to them. Nothing could be 
more clear and positive than the revelation of 
duty which God makes to each one of us. 
We must forsake our sins and deny our- 
selves, and take up our cross and follow 
Christ if we would be saved. 

But beyond that is the region of secrets. 



€&e $)ort?on 223 

When we try to peer into it and explore it 
with our little lamps of reason, when we ask 
how God will deal with the heathen, who 
have not had our privileges and opportuni- 
ties, when we inquire what is to become of 
this man or that man in the eternal future, 
we are simply going beyond the horizon. 
The very attempt to pronounce final judg- 
ment on our fellow-creatures implies what 
Butler has well called " the infinitely absurd 
supposition that we know the whole of the 
case." One thing is certain, God will never 
do injustice to a single soul, " but in every 
nation he that feareth Him and worketh 
righteousness is accepted with Him." The 
rest we may leave in silence with God ; for 
judgment is his province, and there we may 
not intrude. 

" Let not this weak unknowing hand 
Presume thy bolts to throw, 
And deal damnation round the land 
On each I judge thy foe. 

" If I am right, thy grace impart 
Still in the right to stay : 
If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart 
To find that better way." 

II. Let us think now of some of the evils 



224 Straight Sermons; 

and dangers of going beyond the horizon in 
theology. 

First of all, it is a dangerous thing be- 
cause it is likely to lead to mistakes and 
errors. When a man sets out to be wise 
above what is written, he is in a fair way to 
arrive at folly ; and when he endeavours to 
deal with infinite quantities by a finite logic 
his conclusions are apt to be absurd. It is 
better to know nothing about a subject, than 
to know something about it which is not so. 
It is wiser to stand in silent awe before the 
secret things which belong to God, than it is 
to adventure rashly among them and dis- 
cover truths which do not exist. 

The evil genius of religious thought is 
insatiable curiosity, and her handmaid is 
necessary deduction, and her kingdom is a 
kingdom of logical consistency and moral 
confusion. The plague of Christendom has 
been the passion of theology to define what 
God has not defined, and to discover what 
He has kept secret. 

Take a few examples of this kind of work. 
The sacrifice of Christ is revealed to us in 
Scripture as a redemption of sinners. The 
curious theologizer, fixing upon this word re- 



C&e {Jori^on 225 



demption, follows it out beyond the horizon. 
A redemption is a price paid for something. 
If God has paid a price for the soul of man, 
it must have belonged to somebody else. 
The only other conceivable owner is Satan. 
Therefore, the death of Christ was a ransom 
paid to the devil for the soul of man. This 
amazing discovery of logic among the secret 
things was taught in the church for centu- 
ries. 

Again, omniscience is declared to be one 
of the divine attributes. It means simply 
that God's wisdom is perfect, and therefore 
beyond our comprehension. But the inquisi- 
tive explorer takes this word as a raft and 
pushes out into the unknown. Omniscience, 
according to his definition, means that God 
knows everything from all eternity. If He 
foreknows everything, everything must be 
foreordained. If everything is foreordained, 
then the sin and death of every wicked man 
must be predetermined. If these things are 
predetermined, then God must have willed 
that they should come to pass; and if He 
has willed it, He must have decreed it. 
Therefore, " by the decree of God, for the 
manifestation of his glory, some men and 



226 i&tratff&t Sermons 

angels are foreordained unto everlasting 
death, and these men and angels are par- 
ticularly and unchangeably designed, and 
their number is so certain and definite that 
it can neither be increased or diminished." 
Thus the explorer of Omniscience reports 
his discovery ; and when we turn from his 
report to the Bible, which tells us of " God, 
who is not willing that any should perish, 
but that all should come to repentance," 
we feel that the explorer has gone a long 
way beyond the horizon and has discovered 
something which is probably not true. 

Again, the Bible reveals the fact of the 
second coming of Christ, but it declares at 
the same time that the day and the hour of 
his advent are hidden from all men. Now 
here is a horizon distinctly and divinely es- 
tablished, and yet good people have not been 
able to restrain their curiosity from trying 
to pass over it. They have counted the num- 
bers in the book of Daniel, and discovered 
that Napoleon Bonaparte was the man of sin. 
They have investigated the horns of the va- 
rious allegorical creatures and the clothing 
of the scarlet woman in the book of the Rev- 
elation, and identified the Pope as the anti- 



6Ef)e Ibotteim 227 



christ. They have fixed with more or less 
particularity the date of the millennium, and 
have assembled in white robes to wait for its 
arrival — but it failed to arrive, because it 
is still beyond the horizon. 

Of all the activities in which men have 
employed their intellect, there is none which 
has produced such a large amount of incor- 
rect information and erroneous discovery, as 
this habit of pushing beyond the horizon 
into the secrets of God. 

Moreover, it is an undesirable habit be- 
cause it leads to bitter strife and controversy. 
There is no opinion for which men are so 
ready to fight as one in regard to which 
there is room for considerable uncertainty. 
Almost all of the conflicts in Christian 
thought — and many of the most bloody 
schisms in the Christian Church — have 
been in the region of speculation rather 
than in the region of faith. In regard to 
the great essential truths which are clearly 
revealed there has been substantial unity 
from the beginning. But when men have 
begun to make their inferences and deduc- 
tions from these truths, when they have 
tried to run them out beyond the horizon, 



228 H>trataj)t Sermon* 

and to map out the universe according to a 
fixed system, then divisions have appeared, 
and anathemas and counter-anathemas have 
filled the air, and the music of worship has 
been broken by the clash of swords. " What 
are these people quarrelling about?" asks 
the plain man. They are quarrelling, my 
beloved brother, for the most part about the 
things that none of them can understand. 
Being unwilling to let God have any secrets, 
they are unable to let men have any peace. 
This is one of the results of going beyond 
the horizon. 

But even if this result does not follow, 
even if speculation upon the secret things is 
carried on peaceably and charitably, it is at 
best an idle habit and therefore undesirable. 
Vast quantities of time have been wasted in 
pursuing investigations into the nature and 
the plans of God which cannot possibly con- 
cern us, or have any appreciable influence 
upon our virtue or our happiness. I have 
heard lately of an ecclesiastical assembly 
which spent many hours in discussing what 
God ought to do with idiots in the future life. 
Not content with the question in its gen- 
eral aspect, they specified the case of a man 



ST&e Jxiri^on 229 



who had been in the possession of his reason 
until the age of twenty-five, and then, by acci- 
dent or disease, had been reduced to idiocy. 
This problem they debated as gravely and 
as exhaustingly as if it had been committed 
to them for decision. I do not know what 
conclusion they arrived at, nor do I think 
that it is of any particular consequence 
whether they arrived at any conclusion. 
The most desirable thing was that they 
should come to an end. 

The trouble with most of our Confessions 
of Faith and Articles of Religion is that they 
are too long. They contain the system of 
doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures ; but 
they contain also a great deal more. And 
these additions, inferences, and deductions 
have always been the most costly to attain, 
the most perilous to defend, the most diffi- 
cult to believe, and the least profitable to 
apply. 

The first lesson to be learned by one who 
would think wisely or speak truly of reli- 
gious questions is to say, in regard to the 
secret things, " I do not know, and I shall 
not try to guess." The advice which Mil- 
ton puts into the speech of the affable arch- 



230 §>traig;!)t Sermons 

angel Raphael is prudent, and as good for 
us as it was for Adam. 

" Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid ; 
Leave them to God above, him serve and fear: 
Of other creatures, as him pleases best. 
Wherever placed, let him dispose : joy thou 
In what he gives to thee, this paradise, 
And thy fair Eve ; Heaven is for thee too high 
To know what passes there. Be lowly wise ; 
Think only what concerns thee and thy being ; 
Contented that thus far hath been revealed, 
Not of earth only, but of highest Heaven.'' 

III. Think now for a moment of the great 
benefits which will come to us from follow- 
ing this advice. Think of the large bless- 
ings of a small theology. Think of the 
advantages of being confined to, and con- 
tented with, the things that are revealed, 
without trying to go beyond the horizon. 

It will deliver us from perplexing thoughts 
which interrupt the sweetness of life. It 
will leave us free to enjoy the good gifts 
of God. Above all, it will enable us to 
devote our best thought, our deepest ener- 
gy, our strongest faith to the apprehension 
and application of those great, simple, vital 
truths which God has made known for the 
salvation of our souls and the uplifting of 



C&e 5>ori^on 231 



the world into the heavenly life. That is 
what we need, and that is what the text 
means, — apprehension and application of 
the great simple truths of religion within 
the horizon. 

The things that are revealed belong unto 
us and to our children forever, — is not 
that what our hearts desire and crave ? A 
religion which shall really belong to us, be a 
part of us, enter into us, abide with us, and 
not with us only, but with our children, for- 
ever. Not many doctrines, but solid. It 
need not be very wide, but it must be very 
deep. It must go down to the bottom of 
our hearts and dwell there as a living cer- 
tainty. To be sure of God, most wise, most 
mighty, most holy, most loving, our Father 
in heaven and on earth ; to be sure of Christ, 
divine and human, our Brother and our 
Master, the pattern of excellence and the 
Redeemer from sin, the Saviour of all who 
trust in Him ; to be sure of the Holy Spirit, 
the Comforter, the Guide, the Purifier, 
given to all who ask for Him; to be sure 
of immortality, an endless life in which no- 
thing can separate us from the love of God, — 
my friends, let us concentrate our faith upon 



232 Strait §>ertiums 

these things. If we can get hold -of these 
profound realities, if we can gather about 
them all the forces of reason and conscience 
and experience and testimony to establish 
them forever, if we can rest upon them 
firmly and steadfastly, feeling that they are 
ours because they are revealed, we shall be 
satisfied. For our great need is not to know 
more about religion, but to be more sure 
of what we know. 

There is but one way to attain this. We 
must live up to what we know. Our text 
concludes by saying "that we may do all 
the words of this law." Goodness is the pur- 
pose of religion, and its best proof. Con- 
duct is the end of faith, and its strongest 
support. God has revealed himself in Christ 
in order that we may love Him and live 
with Him and be like Him. If we will do 
this we shall be sure of Him, and help other 
men to be sure of Him too. The best evi- 
dences of religion are holy and kind and 
useful and godly lives, really moulded and 
controlled by the divine Christ. A short 
creed well believed and honestly applied is 
what we need. The world waits, and we 
must pray and labour, not for a more com- 



SHje $>otJ2on 233 



plete and logical Theology, but for a more 
real and true and living Christianity. 

The best thing that we can do to help the 
world to believe in a Divine Eevelation is 
simply this : Trust in Jesus Christ, love our 
fellow-men, and follow Him in the path of 
daily duty. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct, 2005 

PreservationTechnoIogies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomsnn Park Drivi* 



